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POLITICAL LEADERS OF 
PROVINCIAL PENNSYLVANIA 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

KBW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MBLBOUSNK 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ln 

TORONTO 



POLITICAL LEADERS 



OF 



PROVINCIAL PENNSYLVANIA 



BY 

ISAAC SHARPLESS 

President of Hatkrfobd Collbgb, 1887-1917 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1919 

AU rights reserved 






COPTBIOHT, 1919, 

bt the macmillan company 



Printed from type, Published April, 1919. 



Norfsaot) 9tcs8 

J. 8. Cr.shing Co. — Berwick & Smith Oo. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



APR -^ li^iS 
^ci.Ar)i5iao 



TO 



PREFACE 

The names of the Quaker politicians in this book have 
been selected with the view of showing the applicability 
(or otherwise) to the practical affairs of government of the 
principles which to some extent ruled their lives. 

That they were all, from William Penn down, more or 
less of idealists, is a fact of which they themselves were 
very conscious. As all idealistic attempts have their les- 
sons either of adoption or avoidance, this one may be worth 
recording. 

As a whole the experiment succeeded. As in politics in 
general there was temporizing. Their anti-martial views 
were the most diflBcult to apply consistently and finally 
were the cause of their abstention from public affairs; but 
there are interesting deductions to be drawn both from the 
threescore years of success and tiie ultimate break-down. 
Their ideas of civil and religious liberty, their treatment 
of the Indians, their penal and hospital systems, the large 
material growth which accompanied their management, and 
the general tone of their public life afford a basis of a 
favorable judgment upon their experiment. 

The religious leaders of Friends have received ample rec- 
ognition in print. Something, however, is still due to these 
practical men who wrought with such devotion in working 
out the principles of the "Holy Experiment." 

Havkrford, Pa. 
1919. 



CONTENTS 



PAOX 



Introduction 1 

William Penn 21 

Thomas Lloyd 55 

David Lloyd 84 

James Logan 114 

John IQnsey 155 

Isaac Norris 181 

James Pemberton 200 

John Dickinson 224 



POLITICAL LEADERS OF PROVINCIAL 
PENNSYLVANIA 

INTRODUCTION 

A ROUGH classification might divide ethical standards 
into two groups. One is based on results, the other on 
principles. The first is the favorite method of the poli- 
tician, the man on the street and on the farm. If a thing 
produces good, it is good in itself; if evil, evil. A method 
of action, a piece of legislation is to be justified or con- 
demned by the consequences which follow it. In ordinary 
affairs not involving moral considerations this sort of judg- 
ment is universal. Business decisions are wise or unwise 
according as they prosper. Fiscal legislation is ordinarily 
decided, not by eternal principles of political science, but 
by results as shown by history and experience which fol- 
lowed similar legislation in the past and are likely to follow 
it in the future. Perhaps ninety-nine per cent, of the acts 
of legislatures are determined by such considerations. 

Philosophers codify these methods and variously call 
themselves hedonists, utilitarians, pragmatists and so on, 
as they vary the theories to suit the conditions of the age 
or country. 

If one could see all the results nothing could be better. 
But the wisest of philosophers can only see a little way 
ahead and the shrewdest of politicians and business men 
have a limited horizon. What is manifestly useful to a 



2 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

few people immediately affected may not be for a more 
distant future or a wider circle. The primary results may 
seem highly beneficial but those which result from these, 
unseen by the performers, may be disastrous. 

The other sort of standard is based on something sup- 
posedly more fundamental. According to this when it 
comes to decisions involving the moral idea there is no room 
for a consideration of consequences. Things are inherently 
right or wrong. One must be guided by what is called the 
moral law. If we can ascertain this as applied to the case 
human duty is determined. It may lead apparently into 
all sorts of pitfalls and failures but in the long run it will 
prove a safe guide. In the eternal plans of a Divine Ruler 
of the universe that which seems inexpedient to us may be 
of the highest expediency; our very failures may be the 
means to the greatest success. The real good is the per- 
manent, abiding, satisfactory result which comes by the 
operation of all the many factors and forces producing it, 
too various and too hidden for human ascertainment, but 
which are all parts of one great plan. It is the duty of the 
individual not to mar this plan. If he knows what his 
part is, small or great, resulting to himself as it will in loss 
or gain, resulting to others apparently for material good or 
ill, he performs it faithfully, and concerns not himself 
greatly with what follows. His conscience or judgment 
determines his course and that is all there is to it. 

But how is the man who takes this attitude to find what 
this moral law is? How is his conscience or judgment to 
be enlightened? There are quite as many philosophic 
views on this question as in the field of utility. Men base 
the standards of rectitude on reason, on intuition, or reve- 
lation, or on authority human or divine, and deduce a code 
of conduct which satisfies the argument. Sometimes it is 
expressed in the sacred books of their religion, sometimes it 



INTRODUCTION 3 

comes to them directly as the expressed will of their Deity 
felt in their consciences, sometimes as the logical result of 
their rational processes. 

The standard Friends of the past have belonged to this 
second class. When their duty was made known to them 
they were not disturbed by results. So they went to jail 
or to death for a conviction which often seemed trivial or 
foolish to others, rather than abate an item of it. If one 
argued with them that their liberty might do more for their 
cause than the small testimony, the argument fell on deaf 
ears. That testimony was their present duty and all the 
rewards of disobedience, all the plausible considerations of 
results, had no bearing on the case. One and all the Friends 
of the first generations and the typical Friends which fol- 
lowed them were never utilitarian. 

But the interesting fact remains that though they thus 
ignored results they got them. Their policy or, as it often 
seemed, lack of policy, secured consequences. They re- 
ceived religious liberty earlier and more fully than the tem- 
porizing sects. They had their marriage regulations made 
legal; they were allowed to affirm rather than to swear; 
much respect was paid to their anti-martial views; they 
effected reforms in the jails and asylums of England and 
America, and their treatment of aborigines and its conse- 
quences has become historic. 

There are many reasons for saying that fidelity to right 
in the face of seeming disaster works better than any one 
expects. There are many facts of history which show that 
men and nations do get along, when they follow the right, 
in a way which no one could have foreseen. There is some 
inherent vitality in the truth which makes its own way, or 
has a way made for it. 

The Friends have abstained often in the past, from the 
activities of politics and of government. Their thoughts 



4 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

have been so pervaded with the idea that immoral acts 
caimot be made moral by the beneficent consequences which 
seem likely to result, that they become ineflBcient in the 
work of practical politics as it sometimes exists. When 
they swallow their scruples they cease to be in harmony 
with the Friends' position and lose their standing in the 
church. Hence we have frequently found that those mem- 
bers who have become active in political life have been on 
the fringe of the Meeting rather than, as they were in early 
Pennsylvania, the trusted ministers and officials, whose 
state duties bore on their consciences no less rigorously 
than their ecclesiastical duties, but who would sacrifice 
either rather than violate an apprehended moral obligation. 

Good seems to come from the chicanery of politics no less 
certainly than from war. Out of the selfishness, the venal- 
ity, the immoral strateg>' of the presidential conventions 
has come the greatest line of rulers any country has ever 
seen in any age. From the days when Hamilton traded 
off with Jefferson the location of the capital city for the fund- 
ing of the state bonds, in the first Congress down to the 
days of the last Congress, many measures yielding valuable 
results have come as the results of bargains not always hon- 
orable or moral. Every legislator knows that in order to 
have a good measure passed it often seems necessary to 
support others who want bad measures passed, and the 
perfectly independent man who yields nothing in this way 
is hardly efficacious in the councils or acceptable to his 
constituents. To do evil that selfish projects may succeed 
and to do evil that good may come are the lines that have 
too frequently distinguished the evil from the good legis- 
lator. 

The principles which have been the keynote of Quaker 
morality and those which define the average morality of the 
politician even of the better sort are widely apart. The 



INTRODUCTION 5 

one is idealistic, the other utilitarian. The one has never 
been able to convert the other to the theory that idealism in 
the long run is of the highest utility, and the other has had 
no faith in any principle whose utility he cannot grasp as 
likely to ripen in the very near future. 

To this extent we can sympathize with the abstention of 
Friends from politics. If a state is dominated by an unholy 
machine which allows no one in office except obedient 
henchmen, who must be without scruple or independent 
character, then " the post of honor is the private station." 
There may be a place for them in the ranks of the militant 
reformers, but hardly in official life. 

Through all the years covered by this volume there was 
growing up, basing itself on George Fox's advice to keep 
clear of the " Commotions " involved in government, a feel- 
ing that Friends should take no part in public life. Their 
course in the Revolution, which had involved the disown- 
ment of some 400 members for participation in the warlike 
affairs of the day, mainly on the American side, made them 
unpopular. They withdrew into a more mystical life and 
an uncompromising devotion to prmciple and testimony, 
and the Quaker of the nineteenth century was evolved. 

This would seem to indicate that the application of a 
Quaker conscience to state affairs in a non-Quaker com- 
munity is impossible. 

Probably conditions will never be better than in Colonial 
Pennsylvania, and there it broke down, after 70 years' 
trial, though at first against the popular will, in the face of 
apparent political necessity. 

But it does not prove that Friends may not accept many 
posts in government, both executive and legislative, which 
need not touch on their convictions and in which they may 
render signal service. 

They may also bring the attention of a nation to the 



6 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

moral issues of the day, a task for which Friends with the 
ancient sort of standards would seem to have great ad- 
vantages. 

It tones up the nation to have its thoughts turned to eth- 
ical, rather than exclusively economic subjects. One moral 
question brings another in its train and men get to think- 
ing in terms of right and wrong rather than expedient and 
opportune. In the decade prior to our Civil War when men 
were fused together on the subject of the rights of man, and 
used such phrases as " the higher law," " the irrepressible 
conflict," " the true grandeur of nations," there was a mani- 
fest raising of standards. Then came the war and the 
host of questions of currency, tariff, revenue, and material 
issues generally, which divided parties in the succeeding 
years, and morality took the second place to economics and 
men thought in dollars rather than in righteousness. We 
had a great growth in wealth and all its unhealthy accom- 
paniments of monopolies, corporate interference with gov- 
ernment and boss and machine rule in politics. Later the 
moral sense of the nation reasserted itself and the develop- 
ment of attention to human rights and the social conscience, 
and to specific matters like temperance and peace and civil 
service reform, went on apace. It is one of the great evils 
of war that it draws the interests of men from such move- 
ments, to the more pressing but less vital ones of national 
defense, sources of national income, reduction of national 
expenditure for social development, and all the lesser breed 
which designing politicians take advantage of to press 
their own selfish designs for office and emolument. Some 
beneficent reforms which need advertising to make people 
appreciate them are thrust aside by the insistence on the 
more spectacular national needs, and the wholesome dis- 
cussion of moral and political reform in a democracy is 
impeded. For this discussion under normal conditions is 



INTRODUCTION 7 

the very lifeblood of progress. The American nation will 
not get far astray if its attention can be seriously turned to 
a great issue and a great need. How quickly when it once 
grasped the dangers of corporation control of politics, with 
many blundering and foolish steps, it is true, it improved 
the situation. Free discussion and the honest purposes of 
an intelligent electorate can be depended on to clear av/ay 
any heresy before it reaches the stage of serious danger to 
the national soul. 

But morality ■ must have the right of way, and while 
matters in which the economic rather than the moral pre- 
dominate should have their large place in national councils 
and public discussions, it is the duty of every man with 
influence in public life to press to the front the great abid- 
ing projects which have their root in eternal right, and here 
Quaker traditions and principles should make a preposses- 
sion in favor of such a course of action. 

There are a number of reforms which have been their 
concerns very largely in the past. The substitution of life 
imprisonment for capital punishment, the development of 
the reformatory idea in prisons and kindly treatment in 
asylums, the one-price system in sales, the limitation of 
fortunes and expenditures within moderate dimensions, 
theories of education which are at once practical and spir- 
itual, the rigidly honest management of public funds, all of 
these, in which good men generally would join, have some 
of their roots in legislation, and if not national party issues, 
not infrequently become the issues in State or local elec- 
tions or legislation. 

Then there is the great question of warlike preparation 
and policy. This is the rock on which Quaker participa- 
tion in politics has usually been shipwrecked. It broke 
its control in provincial Pennsylvania. It drove the 
Society back into itself in the Revolutionary War and pro- 



8 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

duced an inwardness from which it has only in the last half 
century evolved. It forced John Bright from the British 
Cabinet when Alexandria was bombarded. It caused the 
breaking of the property of Joshua Rowntree in the Boer 
War. It has sent many a conscientious sufferer to jail 
rather than pay military fines or join in military exercises. 
In wartime it operates to render pacifists objects of un- 
popularity among a great host of men, some unthinking and 
hysterical, some seriously concerned for the national safety. 

Here is the great problem of to-day for the Christian 
statesman who can maintain himself conscientiously in pub- 
lic life. He needs to show the nation that an aggressive 
policy of goodwill, the absence of all design on the integ- 
rity or interests of others, the rigid and even generous 
enforcement of all treaties and conventions, the full com- 
prehension of and respect for the points of view and 
political and commercial interests of others, are worth more 
in maintaining peace than dreadnoughts or submarines, 
coast defences or standing armies. Had we the greatest 
armaments in the world, which after the expenditure of 
billions of dollars and years of times we might have, with 
all the military spirit and commercial interests necessarily 
developed by such an aggregation, who could trust the 
nation not to enter with slight provocation upon a career of 
conquests or overbearing treatment in the cause of merce- 
nary or political interests! The danger of foreign aggres- 
sion upon a nation doing its generous part in world diplo- 
macy, upon whose goodwill the commercial prosperity of 
all others was largely dependent, is far less than the 
danger, under the guise of preparedness, of creating a spirit 
of militarism, which will break down our Christian stand- 
ards and lead on to a cataclysm such as a similar spirit has 
developed in Europe. 

The ideal Friend stands for the development of person- 



INTRODUCTION 9 

ality. For this he can not go to war, for this involves the 
subordination of personality to human commands, doing 
evil that good may come, the merging of the individual con- 
science into the conscience of the mass. He can not swear 
for his every word has the sanction of truth behind it. He 
can not be an unquestioning member of a political group 
taking on or leaving off principle at the behest of a leader or 
of utilitarian considerations. He can not grind the poor in 
business or the criminal in jail, for the respect for his own 
personality induces respect for that of others. He must 
go through life more or less isolated, not from lack of sym- 
pathy for others, for he ought to have this in the highest 
degree, but because the machinery of modern methods is 
too rigid for his open-minded and independent soul. He 
will take his orders from his own discerning heart rather 
than from current opinion or popular impulse. " The 
method of Christianity does not lend itself to those accom- 
modations and compromises without which nothing can be 
done in politics." 

If he can do all this and still be an effective public serv- 
ant, as an exceptional man in an exceptional place may be, 
the Quaker in politics may live. If not he will sacrifice 
place to conscience, expediency to principle. 

These pages will show to what extent the prominent 
agents in carrying Friendly principles into effect in the 
politics of provincial Pennsylvania accomplished their 
purposes. In varying degrees their public careers were 
mixtures of idealism and opportunism. But the most 
" practical " of them showed some effects of the spirit of 
Quaker teaching, which modified their actions, and cut out 
lines of effort which promised valuable results. 

In the application of certain principles they were pioneers. 
Their experiments have been justified by the results which 
followed. No other founder than William Penn, except on 



lo POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

a smaller scale Roger Williams, adhered more generously 
to the ideas of religious and civil liberty and the separation 
of church and state. His followers proved the utility as 
well as ideal rectitude of the principle and prospered greatly 
as a result. No other colony treated the natives so justly 
or reaped so much peace and healthy development or drew 
in as a consequence settlers and wealth so rapidly. Their 
position with regard to oaths, which they adhered to tena- 
ciously, has been illustrated by recent tendencies which show 
at least that the affirmation is equally effective in securing 
veracity and fidelity to duty. Their early penal system, 
excepting their unfortunate lapse in the matter of capital 
punishment for minor crimes, was governed by the ideas of 
reformation and leniency which lie at the basis of the best 
modern methods. They were a century ahead of their time 
in seeing the evil of lotteries, and prohibiting them. In an 
age when piracy and prize goods were common they bore 
an unflinching testimony against them in all forms. The 
colonial Quakers took an ever developing part against the 
slave trade and slavery and laid the foundation of the pub- 
lic sentiment which made Pennsylvania the first state of 
the Union to pass an abolition law. They had the institu- 
tion nearly exterminated in the north when the Federal 
Constitution was adopted. John Woolman, Anthony Ben- 
ezet and their friends keeping on moral grounds rather than 
economic were ceaseless in urging the fact that property in 
man violated inherent right and Christian principle. 

Their position with regard to war seems not to have been 
indorsed by the general practice of the future. Its essen- 
tial cruelty and immorality are by most people, including 
Christian ministers, justified by the necessities of the case 
and the misfortunes which would seem to result from its 
abandonment. All recognize its evils and long for its aboli- 
tion but find in concrete cases good reasons for adopting it 



INTRODUCTION ii 

as the least of the possible evils. They do not see as the 
Friends thought they saw that the best thing to do, is to 
avoid any participation in it as a wrong thing in itself and 
to trust that somehow in the long run the right would 
justify itself. This view may yet triumph but writing in 
the midst of the Great War when all Christian bodies except 
the Friends and a few other of the smaller sects alone take 
this position, one can not fail to see that murder and maim- 
ing and violation of human rights of all kinds do not seem 
reprehensible in the settlement of national affairs as they 
are fully recognized to be in personal differences. Possibly 
the near future will tell a different story. 

Why were Friends able to do even this much of pioneer 
work in social and moral reform, for in England they could 
give an equally good account of themselves under less free 
and easy circumstances? 

It was not because of superior intelligence or education 
though these had doubtless their effects with the leaders of 
the movement. As a whole they were not highly educated 
or trained in social or ethical learning. It was not because 
they were more anxious to do right than their contempo- 
raries, for many of all bodies had motives as pure and con- 
sciences as alert. The following answers to the question 
may be put forward tentatively. 

They were not drawn into any movement which promised 
spectacular results from a supernatural agency. 

The first Christians were so full of the idea of the early 
" second coming " that the incentive to reform did not 
exist. What difference did any amount of cruel treatment 
make to a slave, any inhumanities of goverimient, any hor- 
rors of warfare, if all was to be soon set right and a uni- 
versal reign of righteousness and sinlessness inaugurated 
by a Divine Being, who would come independently of 
anything which they could do, their duty being only to 



12 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

prepare themselves inwardly for the enjoyment of the 
happy fruits. Paul did not attack slavery or war or graft 
as institutions but preached the inner rectitude of the indi- 
vidual. His followers saw in this inner rectitude not so 
much a means of service to others as salvation for them- 
selves. This it is true lifted men above the plane where 
the worst evils were possible and so many of them disap- 
peared, but any systematic social reconstruction was not 
preached. As Harnack says, " The Gospel is not one of 
social improvement but of spiritual redemption." 

One finds nothing of this appeal to such a catastrophic 
advent in the writings of the Early Friends. The Bible 
passages referring to it were applied to an appearance of 
the Divine spirit to individual hearts, leaving them, thus 
illuminated, to work out their own problems. They turned 
their minds inward and accepted the responsibility of their 
actions, not leaving all response to a day when Christ him- 
self would set matters right. They looked and waited for 
this illumination. Their meetings for worship were not for 
the purpose of listening to music or sermons, but to a Di- 
vine voice in their consciences. When this told them an 
institution was out of harmony with God's will they wanted 
no other evidence. May it not be possible that they had 
a surer support for their social work than the most of us are 
now willing to admit? 

Nor would they grant that any such a task was impos- 
sible. Nothing with such a backing could be hopeless. 
There was no demonic power in " the world " which would 
not succumb in time to a quiet attack, faithful to death. 
With hearts open to influence and strengthened by a " will 
to power " from above, each one was to do his duty as he 
saw it and the harvest was some day sure. The time came 
in the history of the Society when a copy of the first testi- 
monies was accepted by the rank and file too slavishly, but 



INTRODUCTION 13 

by this time the testimonies themselves had become tradi- 
tions and the body remained true to them, while there 
were always some prophets open to new truths. 

Some one said before the war that the " three invin- 
cibles " were the Romish Church, the German Army and 
the Standard Oil Trust. The real Quaker of the olden 
time would have said that these three would all fall as grain 
before the sickle in the face of a silent assembly responsive 
to God's spirit if out of harmony with it. 

The same attitude of mind which looked for the second 
advent in early Christian times is produced by dependence 
upon the spasmodic " revivals " of modern date to main- 
tain the spiritual life. During the intervals there is a sag, 
and a comfortable feeling exists that it will be made all 
right when the next excitement stirs up the emotions. The 
converts are content not only for themselves but for others 
to await these determining issues as all-suflScient rather 
than to engage in serious and intelligent efforts to study the 
causes of social ills and apply the remedies. 

Through the centuries the preparation for the next world 
has been the governing purpose of Christianity, After 
about 250 a. d. the monastic movement beginning in the 
East, borrowed from other religions, had sway over the 
most devoted followers. Its purpose was a desire to gain 
heaven for one's self rather than the preparation for service 
in this world. Its ascetic principle led to the subjection, 
not the upbuilding, of the body, the elimination, not the 
proper training, of useful faculties. The more one tortured 
himself, kept apart from his fellows, subjugated in his own 
person the world, the flesh and the devil, the more sure he 
was of eternal reward. If by such means he could perform 
miracles of healing they were valuable as a testimony to his 
own holiness, rather than as helping his more sinful neigh- 
bors. Western monasticism was more practical and useful, 



14 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

though hardly less ascetic. But its motive was the same — 
otherworldliness rather than unselfish service. This still 
persists but happily a more generous view of the utility of 
goodness now often prevails. 

Friends to some extent were influenced by this feeling. 
But George Fox and William Penn were very practical 
mystics though they never lost the hope and the belief in 
immortality. But it seemed to them to come as a natural 
reward of duty done on earth rather than as something to 
be striven for in itself. As Whittier, the greatest of modern 
Quaker prophets, has said: 

" So to the calmly gathered thought 
The innermost of truth is taught, 
The mystery dimly understood 
That love of God is love of good. 
• ••••* 

That to be saved is only this 
Salvation from our selfishness. 

• ••••• 

That book and church and day are given 
For man not God, — for earth not heaven; 
The blessed means to holiest ends, 
Not masters, but benignant friends: 
That the dear Christ dwells not afar, 
The king of some remoter star, 
Listening at times with flattered ear, 
To homage wrung from selfish fear, 
But here amidst the poor and blind. 
The bound and suffering of our kind, 
In works we do, in prayers we pray, 
Life of our life, he lives to-day." 

Hence their obligations were never dulled by a feeling 
that the progress of humanity was of less importance than 
their own freedom from penalty. The nether world was 
not described in their writings in the lurid pictures else- 



INTRODUCTION 15 

where seen. The punishment they preached was the loss 
of fellowship with the Father; their Heaven was the com- 
pleteness of this fellowship. Salvation came with a re- 
deemed life, a salvation from sin as well as from future 
punishment. The life and death of Christ reproduced in 
themselves, with them, as with him, sent them out to heal 
and to help bodies and social conditions. The ideal Quaker 
of the John Woolman type lived a life of close communion, 
of great searching of motives, of intense desire for purity 
of heart, but for the sake of never ending helpfulness 
towards the worldly as well as the spiritual conditions of 
others. " They were saved men themselves before they 
went about to save others " is a Quaker classic. The inner 
religious experience was the basis of service. Political 
and economic considerations were secondary though help- 
ful. In this way only can the old Quaker conception of 
inwardness be linked with the modern study of economic 
law and social justice. 

They preached also as necessary a continuous experience 
of Divine support and education. It was not merely one 
or a series of spasmodic influences, renewable at the pleas- 
ure of the individual, and independent of duty performed 
in the intervals. It was rather a consistent spiritual im- 
pulse, not always equally strong, which condemned every 
shortcoming and gave its peaceful reward to every faithful 
response to a call to service; which was clarified and 
strengthened by obedience and exalted by fidelity. So 
came the Quaker conscience; to its possessor the greatest 
thing on earth; faulty in discovering fully absolute truth, 
but simply another way of saying that in every emergency 
of life a man must do the best he knows and feels and omit 
a calculation of consequences. So every call to duty no 
matter how slight the duty might be, became as the apple 
of his eye, worth loss, worth suffering, worth imprisonment, 



1 6 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

worth death itself. His grip on a line of service could not 
be shaken off by threat or argument but he would persist 
with quietness and confidence, without bravado, " with 
charity for all, with malice toward none, with firmness in 
the right as God gave him to see the right." 

A statement of principles should be but a cross section 
of a developing belief. Like all human institutions it 
changes with time. If it becomes fixed and necessary it 
becomes a creed and fetters progress. Men must conform 
their mental operations to its meaning. With much that 
is true, in time it may be inadequate or erroneous. It may 
become an object in itself and all movements be gauged 
by the efforts for its maintenance. Social movements 
which do not seem to conform themselves to it, are judged 
adversely by its standard, itself only a secondary present- 
ment of a prior belief. This is true whether it be an edict 
of some old council, or a collection of biblical passages, 
stripped of their context and real meaning. 

There never was a Quaker creed. In theory at least the 
free spirit of Christ was an ever new source of revelation. 
There were no Quaker ordinances essential to the spiritual 
life. The way was open for changing statements and sym- 
bols to suit advancing thought. It was not necessary to 
adopt or follow any ritual. George Fox did not mean at 
first to found a sect but to infuse a certain spirit into all 
Christian believers. It is true that crystallization came 
in time, that forms supposedly essential were developed and 
that doctrines almost credal in their tendencies became 
largely prevalent. The dead times of Quakerism were 
those when the spirit and personality of Christ became so 
merged with tradition and custom and fixed belief that the 
freedom to progress was hindered. But it was never quite 
lost. 

One must be appreciative of the fact that the above is 



INTRODUCTION 17 

rather an ideal, than an actual statement of Quaker condi- 
tions; that the body was never fully permeated with the 
liberty to attack moral evils and appreciate moral truths 
at their real value. But there were always some who did 
so appreciate them and they pointed the way. But clearly or 
dimly as such lights were seen it is possible that they were 
bright enough to enable the Society of Friends to act as 
eflScient precursors of certain social reforms; which gave 
them a sense that liberty and justice and peace and kindli- 
ness were worth striving for, and which showed them how to 
work wisely and effectively for a religion which touched 
men's lives in this world and helped bring about the King- 
dom of God on earth. 

They lost strength at times by the prosperity which came 
with respect and success; by theories of living devoid of 
experience; by minimizing the power of Jesus Christ; by the 
use of forms after the life had departed from them; by 
neglecting to revise their testimonies to suit new conditions ; 
by a distrust of learning and the experience of others. Their 
weaknesses and their strength are both full of meaning. The 
one hindered their growth and influence, the other has kept 
them alive, even when, as in war times, they have run coun- 
ter to public opinion and prevalent Christian sentiment. 

In summarizing the sources upon which the early Friends 
based their attitude to moral reforms, and which brought 
them whatever measure of success they had the following 
may be considered: 

1. They judged questions by moral principle rather than 
by expediency. 

2. They depended on a continuous moral education 
through direct Divine agency rather than on spectacular 
displays of Divine interference for which they were not 
responsible, to set things right. 



1 8 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

3. Their religion was intended to be practical as applied 
to the affairs of this world and not useful only as a prepara- 
tion for the next. 

4. They were not bound by a closed creed or tied to a 
ritual which prevented adaptations to new conditions and 
new revelations of truth. 

5. They were willing to admit the supreme authority of 
the New Testament in its spirit and methods. 

Many are sceptical as to the ability of a minister of old 
time " to speak to the condition " of an individual unknown 
to himself previously. There is great possibility of self- 
deception but there seem to be too many well authenticated 
cases to doubt the reality of such revelations. One is, how- 
ever reassured when a man so accustomed to weigh histor- 
ical evidence and so fair and open-minded as Dr. Thomas 
Hodgkin, himself a Quaker minister, writes as follows: 

" And though I have heard many rambling discourses 
which showed rather the desire to be helpful than any real 
power of helping . . . I am on the other hand fully per- 
suaded that in many cases, a knowledge of the needs of the 
congregation or of some individual member of it, which was 
not in the intellect of the preacher has been by some spir- 
itual process which I do not pretend to explain, but which 
I believe to be God-guided, conveyed into his mind during 
the preparatory time of silent waiting upon God." ^ 

And again, 

" Not so the early Friends. It was surely a heaven sent 
instinct which restrained them from calling the Bible the 
Word of God." ' 

Is it a far cry to extend this principle from individual 
to group illumination? To believe that when a company 
of dedicated souls sitting in quiet with all worldly voices 

» Life of T. Hodgkin, p. 333. = Ibid. p. 340. 



INTRODUCTION 19 

and desires hushed, unitedly expecting instruction from 
above, and their whole being attuned to its reception and 
awaiting its deliverance, should have " the feeling which is 
evidence," that their community duties pointed in a certain 
direction? Is there not historic evidence enough, that here 
is a factor of enlightenment which in our inquiries towards 
the ways and means of social betterment should not be left 
out of account? 

We may assent to this, but in modern times we hardly 
practice it, when we talk, for instance, of social justice to 
the wage earner. We find the two lines of argument set 
against each other. Our ancestors have often denied the 
economic reasonings which appeal to us; also our ardent 
and devoted missionary friends tell us that all good things 
will follow real Christian experience. Many workers, on 
the contrary, say that laws as immutable as gravitation 
determine sociological conditions, that it is our duty to find 
and apply them, and that Christian experience has nothing 
more to do with it than with the movements of the planets. 
If we could join together on the one hand the sources of 
enlightenment which seem to have been effective with 
Friends of the past, and on the other the modern ideas about 
the reign of law and the lessons of history as contributory 
and influential, such a union would be irresistible. 



WILLIAM PENN 

It is not the purpose of this sketch to give even in broad 
outline an account either of the life or the writings of Wil- 
liam Penn. His many biographers have amply attended 
to the former and the latter are too voluminous and dis- 
connected to be mentioned even by title. We shall confine 
ourselves to a brief estimate of his character and abilities 
and the political ideals which he sought to introduce into 
the life of his Province. The veneration in which his name 
was held, and the beneficent results of his policies and 
principles became after his death, most intensively within 
his own denomination but not confined to it, the origin of 
almost too great a reputation for sanctity and wisdom, and 
leavened the life of the province throughout its whole his- 
tory. 

His biographers have copied from each other and perhaps 
too carelessly accepted tradition as to some events which 
have not stood the test of closer examination; but enough 
of well authenticated facts, letters of himself and judicious 
friends, epistles on religion and government, and the undis- 
puted actions of his public and private career, exist from 
which to frame an estimate of his strength and his weak- 
ness. 

Hepworth Dixon and others seem to have effectually 
answered Macaulay's charges to his discredit. It is un- 
fortunate, however, that they are embalmed in that his- 
torian's brilliant style and perennially interesting volumes. 

20 



WILLIAM PENN 21 

Where a score read the attack but one knows of the defence, 
and so the misstatements will for ever be renewed and be- 
lieved. 

There are, however, certain weaknesses of Penn's char- 
acter, not seriously discreditable to him, but which detract 
something from the universal praise often accorded him. 
He was a poor judge of character. His Deputy-Governors 
were often most unfortunate selections. Blackwell, an old 
Cromwellian soldier, honest and moral, had no appreciation 
of the Quaker character with which and over which he was 
to govern. He was, as he admitted, " unequally yoked" 
and " unfeignedly gave thanks to God " when he was re- 
called. Evans, a young libertine, swollen with a puerile 
self-conceit, offended in every way his best friends and 
made endless troubles for Penn. Gookin, severe and un- 
yielding, with a stubbornness lapsing into insanity, was an 
unquestioned misfit. The better judgment of Penn's widow 
saved the day for the family after this succession of fail- 
ures. 

It is true the problem was a hard one. A Friend would 
not perform the duties which involved certain military 
declarations and offices; these they were quite willing that 
others should undertake, but against them their own con- 
sciences rebelled. The Deputy-Governor must, therefore, 
not be a Friend. He must, however, be acceptable to them, 
appreciating their spirit and respecting their scruples, for 
by virtue both of numbers and character they controlled 
the situation. They were to be his partners, not his sub- 
ordinates, and with the extravagant idea of their rights and 
privileges which some of them had, they were no easy part- 
ners to work with. The ideal Governor must not only be 
self-respecting, but tactful; not only a strict moralist, but 
tolerant of differing standards; not only faithful to Penn's 
interests, but appreciative of the people's liberties. Not 



22 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

one of Penn's choices, with the possible exception of Thomas 
Lloyd, possessed all these qualities, and bitterly the pro- 
prietor paid the price of his poor judgment in thirty years 
of governmental confusion and financial loss. 

The account of Penn's relations to his knavish steward 
is not pleasant reading for his friends. Ford was a Friend 
and a business man of ability. Penn placed all his affairs 
in Ford's hands and dismissed his care of them. Full of 
great schemes of philanthropy, his influence eagerly sought 
for suffering Friends and suitors of all kinds, this is not a 
matter of wonder. But when the fraudulent nature of 
Ford's doings was known to Penn, or might easily have been 
known, he still allowed matters to proceed, heaping up 
claims till the province became mortgaged and his friends 
had infinite difficulty in untangling the complicated fraud. 
At first it was misplaced confidence, which any busy man 
might have fallen into. Then lest the plight which had 
happened to him should injure the Holy Experiment, he 
allowed it to proceed and kept it quiet, thus piling up un- 
told suffering and trouble and a term in the debtor's prison 
for himself, and much vexation and expense for his friends 
which an earlier, vigorous exposure might have avoided. 
There was nothing dishonest or illiberal in his course, only 
a suggestion of a lack of downright positiveness in extri- 
cating himself honorably from an unfortunate position. 

The question of military resistance was the great dif- 
ficulty in a Quaker state, which finally wrought the political 
downfall of the body which opposed it. Just prior to the 
downfall, the Friends had, in many cases, held their places 
by pursuing what seems like a doubtful course, going 
further than strict consistency would approve. Penn him- 
self was not quite clear of some equivocation in the matter. 
As we have seen, he appointed non-Quaker deputies to per- 
form acts which he and no other Friend would consider 



WILLIAM PENN 23 

consistent with their profession; to " be stiff with our 
neighbours upon occasion " as he once said. 

This may be defensible, for liberty of the individual con- 
science was their great claim. But when Penn recovered 
his right to govern his province in 1693, it was the result of 
a promise that he would faithfully transmit to the Assembly 
all kingly commands for military aid, which '' he doubted 
not " that body would honor. It did not honor the first 
communication he made in compliance with this implied 
contract, and Penn must have known that it would not 
and that he would not urge it to. 

Fortunately the trouble was only ephemeral, and no one 
called for a literal enforcement of the condition, but this 
hardly acquits Penn of something like hedging in his deal- 
ings with the Crown, a stroke of diplomacy very venial in 
that day, but not quite consistent with an open and per- 
fectly transparent character. 

These, then, seem to be the weak spots in Penn's record, 
an inability to judge men and a certain timidity in dealing 
with difficult situations, when his larger plans would be 
thereby endangered. More than this can hardly be fairly 
charged against him. These were the causes of the most of 
his troubles. Good deputies and bold strokes to rid him- 
self of the webs of chicanery his personal and political 
enemies had woven around him would have kept the tem- 
per of the colonists sweet and loyal and his own actions free 
to carry out his plans. When he went to jail for a matter 
of conscience, every one of his friends must have felt a thrill 
of pride as he declared: " My prison shall be my grave be- 
fore I will budge a jot, for I owe obedience of the conscience 
to no mortal man." But when he sent out his frantic ap- 
peals to Logan to gather in his dues, and allowed his friends 
to raise a subscription to pay off the indebtedness he had 
unwittingly contracted, when he lay months in Fleet prison 



24 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

waiting for his creditors to come to terms, there must have 
been a loss of respect among those who looked to him for 
leadership, even though these were recognized as under the 
circumstances right and necessary things to do, and to be 
the result of no moral obliquity on his part. 

The other side of Penn's character is more pleasing to 
contemplate, and so much more impressive that the flaws 
seem insignificant. He was profoundly and sincerely reli- 
gious, and his personal life was far above the ordinary vices 
of his age. This was questioned probably but once. When 
a persecuting Judge suggested that the early career of the 
prisoner had been guilty of some of the sins against which 
he was declaiming, Penn indignantly denied it and chal- 
lenged any one to prove that by word or deed he had, even 
in his more thoughtless youth, ever offended against the 
standards of a strict morality. The Judge was rebuked by 
a fellow judge, who admitted the truth of Penn's denial and 
told his associate that he had gone too far. The truth 
of the declaration may well be admitted. Only purity 
of life, or arch hypocrisy, could be the basis of such beauti- 
ful precepts of morality and piety as we find in his writ- 
ings, and the latter alternative will hardly be claimed by 

any one. 

The wisdom of many of his Fruits of Solitude, the fervent 
appeal to the reader at the beginning of No Cross, No 
Crown, the fitting and eloquent eulogy on George Fox, and 
many others which will occur to any reader of his works, 
could hardly be the product of a character which had ever 
suffered a moral relapse. Nor is there evidence that the 
validity of his inspired ministry or the profound respect 
and influence accorded to his preaching was questioned by 
his rather exacting collaborators in the Gospel among 
Friends. It is no proof of this that crowds flocked to hear 
him in England when he was expected to be present at a 



WILLIAM PENN 25 

meeting, for this is the meed of every preacher who has for 
the time being the popular ear. 

A better evidence is the judgment of friends expressed in 
private correspondence. Isaac Norris wrote in 1701, just 
as Penn was leaving the province the second time: 

" The unhappy misunderstandings in some and unwar- 
rantable oppositions in others have been a block to our 
plenary comforts in him, and his own quiet; but these 
things are externals only. Our communion in the church 
sweetens all, and our inward waitings and worships to- 
gether have often been a general comfort and consolation; 
and in this I take a degree of satisfaction, after all, that we 
part in love; and some of his last words in meeting yester- 
day, were ' that he looked over all infirmities and outwards, 
and had an eye to the region of spirits, wherein is our 
surest tie ' ; and in true love, there he took his leave of us." 

Again in 1707, when the proprietor was in the darkest 
days of his diflficulties with the Fords, Isaac Norris writes: 

" The more he is pressed, the more he rises. He seems 
of a spirit fit to bear and to rub through difficulties, and 
after all, as thou observes, ' his foundation remains.' " 

William Penn was one of those choice beings whose soul 
was attuned to Divine harmonies, and whose power could 
be felt by kindred spirits in the life of Christ. When he 
was coming to Pennsylvania in 1699, he received three cer- 
tificates from his Friends in England, one from " the Sec- 
ond-day's Meeting of Ministering Friends," in London, one 
from the Friends in Bristol, where he had resided for a 
considerable time, and one from the Monthly Meeting of 
Horsham. They are all most appreciative. The last tells 
of — 

" Our unity and communion with him. ... He had been 
a holy and blessed instrument in the hands of the Lord, 



26 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

both in his ministry and conversation (conduct) and hath 
always sought the prosperity of the blessed truth and peace 
and concord in the Church of Christ; and walked among 
us in all humility, good sincerity and true brotherly love 
to our great refreshment and comfort." 

There was some adverse sentiment. In Pennsylvania, 
this had, to a large extent, a political basis, and was led by 
David Lloyd and Griffith Jones, both probably estimable 
men, but whose extreme demands created a partisan feeling 
that extended into the meetings.^ These men were corre- 
spondents and in sympathetic relations with William Mead 
and Thomas Lower, who are spoken of in the letters of the 
day ^ as representing the opposition party. George White- 
head is often associated with them. 

This opposition from within was largely due to Penn's 
supposed aristocratic tendencies and possible departure 
from a proper simplicity in his relations with the courtly 
influences among which he moved, and also to the Ford 

1 "Our meetings for business are now so much injured by some 
young forward novices and a few partisans of D. Lloyd, still a close 
member, that the more sound and ancient Friends do not venture 
upon anything there that concerns the government, expecting a 
separation upon it whenever it is taken in hand. According to 
present appearances of things, a separation will in time be un- 
avoidable, and that after Friends (in England) have taken notice 
of proceedings here, nothing less than a general purge will ensue. 
J. Logan, 4 mo. 28, 1707." 

2 "There is a short communication held between thy opposites 
among Friends there and that corrupted generation here. G. 
Whitehead has WTote a most affectionate letter to Griffith .Jones. 
He expresses himself as thy friend, but we know how he is linked 
with the Mead and Low^er Party. T believe George is mistaken 
in Griffith, and knows not that he is not received in unity with 
Friends." 

James Logan to William Penn, 6 mo. 10, 1706. 
"They address such on this side the water (England) who are 
judged by them to be not in the best understanding with him." 
Isaac Norris to Joseph Pike, 1 mo. (March) 18, 1707. 
See Penn and Logan correspondence. 



WILLIAM PENN 27 

question and the doings of Evans as deputy-governor. It 
was later swallowed up by the prevailing and warmly ex- 
pressed regard, as these matters were seen to be perfectly 
consistent with his profession and exalted character. After 
1710, both the personal and political antagonism largely 
ceased in Pennsylvania, and those who had been considered 
as opponents lost their influence. The English opposition, al- 
ways less well defined and based on more shadowy grounds, 
seems also to have disappeared about the same time. So 
that, cleared of his financial troubles, his colony loyal, and 
his enemies evanescent, he spent the last two years of his 
vigorous life in a serene atmosphere of success and triumph. 
The stroke that then deprived him of his mental power, but 
left his spiritual faculties unimpaired, brought him univer- 
sal sympathy and appreciation. 

Mentally, Penn was one of the great men of his times. It 
was a day of young men. The great preachers were nearly 
all under thirty, but this might be consistent with ordinary 
intelligence. Penn was more than a great popular preacher. 
He was a man of great thoughts and far-seeing plans and 
definite and courageous convictions based on learning and 
experience and study. He was ready for Oxford at fifteen. 
He was but twenty-three when the germ of the principle of 
universal toleration seems to have taken possession of him, 
apparently evolved from within, which in time became the 
great enthusiasm of his life. At the same time he began to 
preach. The first of his religious works came a few years 
later, and No Cross, No Crown immediately followed. The 
erudition displayed by one so young was a surprise to 
friends and enemies alike. Thus, at the age when the 
average American youth is finishing college, Penn had col- 
lected a wonderful store of knowledge, could command an 
effective English style, and was a master of theological 
arguments of a most serviceable quality. 



28 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

His development was continuous. His work on consti- 
tutions prior to his American experiment betrays the 
thoughtful student of the best that had been written in the 
past. He always had great conceptions and projects. In 
1693 he published his scheme for " An European Dyet, 
Parliament or Estates," to which disputes between nations 
should be referred. All the great Powers were to be repre- 
sented. The advantages of such a court, and the means to 
make its decisions acceptable, in order to avoid wars, were 
presented with great wealth of argument and illustration. 
The Hague tribunal was there in embryo. 

Three years later, he published a plan for the union of the 
American Colonies. Two representatives of each province 
were to meet in New York to arrange matters of common in- 
terest. They were to settle questions concerning commerce, 
the return of criminals, and " consider ways and means to 
support the union and safety of these provinces against the 
public enemies." This was probably the first suggestion 
of the movement which culminated about a century later 
in the Federal Constitution and Union. 

But the greatest and at the same time most practical con- 
ception was the foundation of Pennsylvania itself. That 
there were errors in detail, none can doubt. An absentee 
landlord, even though liberal, can hardly avoid criticism 
and opposition, and such was William Penn to his colony. 
His forceful presence would undoubtedly have composed 
faction and removed difficulties, and it was his full purpose 
to have lived permanently in Pennsylvania. The idea of a 
commonwealth devoted to liberty and peace drew out the 
best powers of a comprehensive and enthusiastic intellect. 
There was no room in Europe, but in the great unoccupied 
expanse of the New World he would carry out his ideals 
with a selected community in sympathy with them, of a 
serious and honest sort, to whom he would transfer the 



WILLIAM PENN 29 

government power and realty rights he had purchased of 
the Crown, reserving only such moderate share of each as 
security for the future and family interests would justify. 
It was a glorious conception and a no less glorious oppor- 
tunity, and we find him continually tempering his natural 
ardor by considerations of duty to God and man, as the 
seriousness of the task and the risks of failure pressed 
themselves upon him. 

There was, too, in his composition a good share of fight- 
ing spirit. He was to have difficulties, but he never quailed. 
The temper which declared that he would never yield a jot, 
even though he died in prison, served him in good stead in 
other contests. " Can my wicked enemies yet bow? They 
shall, or break, or be broken in pieces before a year from 
this time comes about, and my true friends rejoice," he de- 
clared in a crisis with Lord Baltimore. " If lenitives will 
not do, coercives must be tried," he announced in another 
emergency. It was only this determined vigor which car- 
ried him through the vast heap of difficulties among which 
he struggled. 

The whole of Penn's life indicates the power of his per- 
sonality. Where he was present, events shaped themselves 
towards his purposes. At the courts of Charles II., of James 
II., and of Anne, he had surprising influence. This is all 
the more remarkable because his Quaker scruples in certain 
respects must have removed him far from the ordinary 
courtier. We may assume that his dress, while simple, 
was comely; that his speech, while observing the limitations 
of his sect, was well chosen, pleasing and appreciative of 
the point of view of his associates; that his manners, while 
devoid of the flattering postures and phrases of the day, 
were never offensive. It is only thus that we can explain 
what seems his general friendliness with royalty and nobil- 
ity. " I know of no religion," he says, " that destroys cour- 



30 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

tesy, civility and kindness," and these qualities, together 
with a conversation full of interesting matter and a ready 
wit, seem to have made him generally acceptable. So it 
was that he interceded successfully at court, not only for 
hundreds of persecuted Friends, but for Anglican bishops, 
political refugees, and suffering scholars, as well as crowds 
of needy suitors of humbler rank. 

It was for these purposes, and to counteract the influence 
of Lord Baltimore in the matter of the boundary line, ef- 
forts which never failed of success, that he felt impelled to 
remain so much in England. Again and again he hoped to 
come to Pennsylvania, but the demands of Friends and the 
exactions of Ford kept him at home. Only two visits of less 
than two years each, all too short for the work to be done, 
was he able to make to his province. 

His personal influence was no less marked among his 
colonists. When present, faction was stilled, the Indians 
were pacified, desirable legislation was effected, and under 
his ministry the meetings settled down into quietness and 
harmony. Could he have longer remained, another history 
would have been written. Perhaps it was well that in the 
tutelage of the colony it should have been left to its own 
responsibility, and have found its way through confusion 
to liberty. For had the compelling influence of its founder 
been continually present, a heroic figure among his friends, 
certain aristocratic features and social customs might have 
been engrafted on the government less favorable to liberty 
than such as were worked out through the stress of partisan 
conflict. Whether we sympathize with David Lloyd or 
William Penn in the struggle between them, we may accord 
to each of them a potent influence in shaping the free gov- 
ernment which grew out of the troubled early years of the 
experiment. 

There are many traditions of his life in America: how he 



WILLIAM PENN 31 

outjumped the Indians, and gained their lasting regard; the 
great treaty immortalized by Clarkson in history, by West 
on the canvas, and by Voltaire in happy phrase; the open 
house at Pennsbury, where in feudal style he generously en- 
tertained red man and white, politician and minister alike; 
his " walks " with the Indians and the regard he showed 
for their prejudices and customs; how on his way to Haver- 
ford Meeting he took upon his horse little Rebecca Wood, 
and carried her with him to the Meeting, her bare feet 
dangling on either side; how at Merion a little boy, curious 
to see the great Governor, peeped through a hole in the door 
of his chamber, and saw him on his knees returning thanks 
that he had been provided for in the wilderness. There is 
probably more or less truth in all of these. They show 
that in a little time something of a halo gathered around 
his name, and his little acts became significant, a sure evi- 
dence of influence. 

We may make such surmises as we will concerning the 
extent of the influence of William Penn upon Pennsylvania 
Quakerism, based on his character and standing. The 
Meeting minutes make but limited reference to him. In 
1683 a plan, doubtless originating m William Penn's com- 
prehensive mind, was presented to the Meeting: 

" It being desired to hold a general Meeting of Friends 
from New England to Carolina, the Meeting appoints: 
William Penn, Christopher Taylor, Samuel Jenings, James 
Harrison, Thomas Olive, Mahlon Stacy, to make arrange- 
ments by writing to Friends or speaking, and inform Lon- 
don Yearly Meeting." 

What difficulties prevented the realization of this pro- 
ject for nationalizing the Society of Friends, we do not 
know. They were probably material, rather than political. 
What different development would have resulted is also a 
matter of conjecture. Something of the same idea occurred 



32 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

to certain Yearly Meetings about two hundred years later. 

In 1700, on the occasion of Penn's second visit, we have 
a record of certificates concerning him being received from 
Bristol, London, and Horsham. In the same year " Gov- 
ernor Penn " was appointed on a committee to draw up 
the epistle to London Yearly Meeting. The next year the 
following minute was adopted: 

" Our Governor, William Penn, having said before this 
Meeting that he entends for England, and desires that they 
would appoint ten or twelve Friends to meet him this even- 
ing upon some weighty occasion, in order thereunto, Sam- 
uel Jenings (and fifteen others) and such public Friends as 
have freedom, are desired to meet the Governor accordingly 
about six this evening." 

This meeting is probably referred to in the letter of Isaac 
Norris, already quoted. No other references to him appear 
on the Yearly Meeting minutes. We may safely assume, 
however, that he was an important figure in any meeting 
which he attended. 

In the minutes of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, there 
are evidences of his interest in the details of society work 
and his name appears occasionally. On Eleventh-month 
1st, 1683 (January 1684): 

" A letter of advice from the Governor was read to 
Friends councelling them to be careful in their behaviour for 
Truth's sake, that so the Lord might not be dishonoured and 
the Truth evily spoken of amongst wicked men." 

Again on Sixth-month (August) 5th, 1684: 

" The Governor being present, and his departure for 
England drawing nigh, he moved the Meeting to give him a 
certificate as touching his demeanour amongst the people 
of his province, which was taken into consideration by the 
Meeting." 

And later in the same Meeting: 



WILLIAM PENN 33 

'' A certificate was drawn up in the Meeting according 
to the motion of the Governor, and subscribed by Thomas 
Lloyd (and fifteen others) in the name of the Meeting." 

During his second visit, he expressed to the Meeting a 
'' concern " that religious work should be done among the 
negroes and Indians. Acting on this the Friends appointed 
a Monthly Meeting for negroes to which their masters were 
to send them, and " be present with them at said meetings 
as frequent as may be." It was also agreed that when 
Indians are in town they be invited to a meeting " when 
our Governor is willing to speak to them." 

He worked on ordinary committees, as in the case of the 
widow of Thomas Lloyd, who thought that the executors of 
his will had not treated her fairly. The Governor being 
present on another occasion, " readily condescended " to 
give the materials of the meeting house, erected where the 
City Hall now is, to another in a more accessible part of 
the city. 

When he left in 1701, never to return, though he and they 
hoped otherwise, another cordial and loving certificate 
drawn up by Thomas Story, Samuel Carpenter, and Griffith 
Owen, was given him. 

The personality of William Penn may well be assumed to 
be the most potent influence in the early history of his 
province. His advantages of birth, fortune, and education, 
his superior intellectual and moral powers, his position as 
originator of the conception which had given to all its mem- 
bers their worldly and religious opportunities, his authority 
as Governor and Proprietor, would in any community have 
endowed him with a towering ascendency. But when to 
these are added a humility in religious affairs, which asked 
and would allow no precedence, a record of faithful adher- 
ence to principle through losses and imprisonments, and 
an endowment of a prophetic gift of remnrkable fervor 



34 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

and power, there is no need to doubt that whenever his 
gracious presence could be felt, nothing could ever compare 
with it. Even in his absence, his words and memory and 
spirit hovered over his province in its religious life, and 
became, long after his death, its inspiration and guide. 

From Plato to H. G. Wells many paper constitutions have 
been drawn up. Utopia, Oceana, The New Atlantis, Look- 
ing Backward and a host of others have described ideal 
bases of government. Whether they would work or not 
has never been ascertained for they were never as a whole 
put into operation by their authors or others. Doubtless 
they have supplied ideas and developed the conditions 
which have created successful commonwealths. In this 
way they have fulfilled their function. William Penn 
alone seems to have been able to perform the double duty 
of working out a scheme in theory, and putting it into suc- 
cessful action in a new country. He advised with the re- 
publican Algernon Sidney, with his Dutch friend Benjamin 
Furly and others, but primarily it was the result of his own 
studies and observation. Out of this mass of cogitation and 
advice came his first constitution, still in paper existence 
with marginal and interlinear corrections in the handwrit- 
ing of himself and others. 

He wants " that manner or frame of government that 
shall preserve magistracy in reverence with the people and 
best keep it from being hurtful to them." He thinks that 
the Hebrew and English types afford the best models, but 
" It were a most condemnible superstition to perpetuate 
anything for being ancient or domestic that were not other- 
wise useful." Then he enumerates, first as always, reli- 
gious libert}', " As every person shall in conscience believe 
is most acceptable to God." There shall be a law-making 
power meeting annually and adjourning at its pleasure with 
" Whatever is the privilege of an English House of Com- 



WILLIAM PENN 35 

mons." Each member shall bring a written body of in- 
structions from the electors and if it shall so happen that 
he act contrary to the same then ''He never more presume 
to stand unless the people sensible of his repentance shall 
forgive and choose him." There shall be no imprisonment 
for debt for small sums or capital punishment for small 
crimes. Oaths shall be abolished. There shall be no tav- 
erns or ale-houses, nor any provision for plays, cards, horse 
races, etc. All children shall be taught trades when twelve 
years of age, girls as well as boys. 

A number of changes were made in this before coming to 
America and the first twenty years after the settlement saw 
several constitutions placed on trial. The final one given 
during his second visit here in 1701 lasted till the Revolu- 
tion and is exceedingly simple. 

There were nine articles. 

The first decreed religious liberty. 

The second required a free Assembly with full liberty to 
make laws. 

The third directed that two men should be elected for 
local offices from whom the Governor should choose. 

The fourth required all laws to be passed upon by the 
Governor. 

The fifth secured the rights of criminals to a fair trial. 

The sixth gave to the courts and not the Governor the 
rights to decide all property cases. 

The seventh demanded good morality of the applicant 
for a tavern before license could be granted. 

The eighth prevents the forfeiture of the estates of sui- 
cides and required a six-seventh vote of the Assembly to 
amend any clause. 



36 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

The ninth declares that the clause relating to religious 
liberty will be preserved forever by the proprietor and his 
heirs. 

On this basis of elementary right the government of 
Pennsylvania for 75 years worked with success and a pros- 
perity unrivalled among the colonies. 

The great enthusiasm of William Penn's life was for 
religious liberty. It was just beginning to find a voice in 
Europe in his time. Holland was leading the way and 
Roger Williams who was an English pioneer had in 1644 
published his " Bloody Tenent of Persecution for the Cause 
of Conscience." Here the arguments for the free enjoyment 
of one's own religious convictions and practices were given 
with great liberality and learning. Nor did he shrink from 
the full application of these principles when he founded his 
Rhode Island Colony. Toleration, which implies a favored 
church and permission to others to exist, was as far as the 
more advanced thinkers had elsewhere gone. Massachu- 
setts and Connecticut rigidly excluded dissenters from the 
franchise and demanded of them taxes for the support of the 
state religion. Physical cruelty was the penalty for the 
free exercise of their worship by the Quakers of Massachu- 
setts and they with Baptists and Episcopalians were ban- 
ished. The Church of England was established in New 
York and the South, and, save for a time in Maryland under 
Catholic rule, there were disabilities and fines for dissenters. 

Penn grasped the idea in its fulness and his early at- 
tempts at a constitution for his colony show how thor- 
oughly he was convinced of its righteousness. But he had 
to satisfy the court, and by 1701 when his frame had got 
others, it had received some limitations. 



WILLIAM PENN 37 

" I do hereby grant," he says, "and declare that no per- 
son or persons inhabiting in the province or territories, 
who shall confess or acknowledge one Almighty God — and 
profess him or themselves obliged to live quietly under the 
civil government, shall in any case be molested or preju- 
diced on his or their person or estate because of his or their 
conscientious persuasion or practice, nor be compelled to 
frequent or maintain any religious worship place or min- 
istry, contrary to his or their mind, or to do or suffer any 
other act or thing contrary to their religious persuasion. 
And that all persons who profess to believe in Jesus Christ 
the Saviour of the World, shall be capable (notwithstand- 
ing their other persuasions and practices in point of con- 
science and religion) to serve this government in any 
capacity, both legislatively and executively, etc." 

That is, Penn opened the door of conscience freely and 
equally to all religions which acknowledged the existence 
of a God, and allowed all professing Christians to hold of- 
fice. This latter limitation, which in his time did not 
amount to one, was probably a necessity of his English 
connection. 

Later at the command of England, his successors by a 
test excluded Catholics, who were assumed to be allies of 
the banished Stuarts, and in league with their great national 
enemy, France, from the privileges of office holding, with- 
out however curtailing the freedom of their worship. 

That protection of the Catholics was given is shown by 
an incident of 1755 after the story of Braddock's defeat 
had reached Philadelphia. A mob assembled, as the diary 
of Daniel Fisher says, for the purpose of destroying the 
" Mass House " for supposed sympathy with the Friends. 
" But the peaceable Quakers insisted that the Catholics as 
well as Christians of other denominations were settled upon 
the faith of the Constitution or William Penn's Charter and 
that the governments were bound to protect so long at 



38 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

least as they remained inoffensive, etc." The Friends were 
true to the principles of religious liberty of the Founder.^ 

William Penn had been largely instrumental in securing 
for dissenters in England a certain amount of toleration. 
This was all he could expect there and the tests there re- 
quired were forced upon his colonial oflBcials. He would 
have had them to resist. " Why should you obey any order 
which is not according to patent or law here, nor the laws of 
your own country," he writes indignantly from England. 
This test simply required allegiance and fidelity to the 
Crown, a denial of papal authority and practices and pro- 
fession of faith in orthodox Christianity. The Friends 
could honestly subscribe, but it negatived the application of 
the broader principle to which Penn was committed, against 
any religious test. It remained however all through provin- 
cial days. 

That he would not grant any political favors to his own 
sect is undoubted. He sends a stinging rebuke to a member 
who asks whether the founders of the colony should not 
have such consideration. He gives in a private letter his 
purpose in this respect. " I went thither to lay the founda- 
tion of a free colony for all mankind that should go thither, 
more especially those of my own profession; not that I 
would lessen the civil liberties of others because of their 
persuasion, but screen and defend our own from any in- 
fringement on that account." Knowing so well the disa- 
bilities of Friends in England he would guard against a rep- 

1 The Episcopal minister at Chester about 1740 writes that the 
Quakers were encouraging children to leave his school to join one 
which they had encouraged managed by a "virulent Papist." 
"They did what none but Quakers dare do in a country under 
the government of a Protestant king." But something may be 
charged to partisan zeal in such statements as this. They show 
however a willingness to e.xtend their idea of libertj' to this most 
suspected of religious bodies. 



WILLIAM PENN 39 

etition of them in Pennsylvania, and in guarding it for them 
he did the same for every one else. 

He meant also so far as he was able to provide for the 
future. After prescribing a way by which all the other 
clauses could be amended he says: " Because the happiness 
of mankind depends so much upon the enjoying of liberty 
of the conscience, as aforesaid, I do hereby solemnly de- 
clare, promise and grant for me, my heirs and assigns, that 
the first article of this chapter, relating to liberty of con- 
science, and every part and clause therein, according to the 
true intent and meaning thereof, shall be kept and remain 
without any alteration, inviolably forever." 

Hardly less liberal was his attitude to Democracy. This 
was abated somewhat in course of time by his imperious 
need for financial returns from his colony which were rather 
ungenerously declined, and perhaps also by the aristocratic 
circumstances of his family which had large influence in 
English society of the day. But he started with unbounded 
intentions of radical civil liberty. In his draft of govern- 
ment which he brought from England he allowed himself 
only three votes in a legislative assembly of 272 members 
and no veto. The veto power was returned to him and ex- 
ercised by him and his heirs, or in their absence by their 
deputies, through all the proprietary years. Then he cre- 
ated a bicameral legislature, the appointed Council propos- 
ing all legislation and the elected Assembly passing on it. 
By gradual encroachment on the power of the Council it 
was reduced to an advisory body only, after 1701, and the 
Assembly elected yearly, meeting without call, and ad- 
journing at its pleasure became the free law-creating body 
responsive to public opinion only. The franchise for the 
day was liberal, not universal, but with a moderate property 
qualification. In its frequent contests with the proprietors 
it won victory after victory for the cause of democracy, 



40 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

by bringing popular sentiment to bear, and English fashion, 
withholding money till privileges were granted. 

It was unfortunate that circumstances seemed to place 
Penn in certain exigencies on the side opposed to democ- 
racy. For his early utterances and feelings were far other- 
wise. He had been an ardent advocate of the election to 
Parliament of the radical republican Algernon Sidney. In 
1676 when he was thinking out a government for New Jer- 
sey he said, " We lay a foundation for after ages to under- 
stand their liberty as men and as Christians, that they may 
not be brought into bondage but by their own consent; for 
we put the power in the people." In 1687 he had printed 
the Magna Charta with an introduction and comments in- 
tended to give his colonists a knowledge of their rights as 
Englishmen. " It may reasonably be supposed that we shall 
find in this part of the world many men both old and young 
that are strangers in a great measure to the true under- 
standing of that inestimable inheritance, that every free- 
born subject of England is heir unto by birthright, I mean 
that unparalleled privilege of liberty and property beyond 
all the nations of the world outside." Even the jars of the 
first twenty years did not shake his faith in the people's 
right to claim their dues. In 1700 he says with great frank- 
ness: " If in the constitutions by charter there be anything 
that jars alter it. If you want a law for this or that pre- 
pare it. ... I desire to see mine not otherwise than in the 
public's prosperity." 

The demands of creditors came on him heavily after this. 
He needed the reservations he had claimed out of the 
colonial income. He had lost a princely fortune by his 
investment in Pennsylvania and the settlers were slow to 
pay their dues. They haggled about one privilege after an- 
other, mostly financial, until Penn found himself in alliance 
with the anti-democratic party of the province, and felt 



WILLIAM PENN 41 

that David Lloyd who led the field against him for prop- 
erty as well as political rights was a personal enemy as well 
as a public opponent. But when these petty matters were 
cleared away his life came out in its true colors as the 
friend and champion of a liberal democracy. 

Many letters in existence tell of the large trust of the 
colonists in him and how potential an element this was in 
creating prosperity in the colony. About ten years after 
the settlement Hugh Roberts writes him, " I can truly say 
that many of us had never come here but because of the 
love and unity and confidence we had in thee." Indeed it 
is not unlikely that the whole Welsh immigration was due 
to his personality. They were somewhat disappointed be- 
cause the agreement as they understood it of a " Barony," 
where they could have local home rule after the Welsh 
fashion, had not been kept and the letter of Hugh Roberts 
while professing personal devotion seemed to indicate their 
dissatisfaction. 

On the other hand an English settler, John Goodson, writ- 
ing about the same time, gives a most glowing account of the 
rapidly developing colony but expresses the opinion that 
Penn ought to be there. '* This place is beyond whatever 
our hearts could have thought of, so that we have no cause 
to murmur or complain. ... It might have been many 
hundreds better for thee than it is; for the hearts of many 
were inclined to this land for thy sake which would and 
might have come if thou hadst settled here but now will 
never come if thou comest not." The personality of the 
founder had in the early days much to do with the success 
of the Holy Experiment. 

After the troubles of the early days passed away, troubles 
which William Penn's presence in the country might largely 
have avoided, after the personal differences between Logan 
and Lloyd, between aristocrat and democrat, had been 



42 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

largely forgotten, the name and work of the founder were 
held in ever-increasing veneration. In 1739 speaker Hamil- 
ton, not a Friend, gives an enthusfastic account of the pros- 
perity, freedom and happiness of the people, due he says not 
mainly to any material considerations but " to the Consti- 
tution of Mr. Penn." 

About the same date the daughter of the founder, Mar- 
garet Penn Freame, in a letter to her brother John urging 
that a member of the family should live in the province 
says: " The great regard they (the people) had for our 
good father makes us welcome everywhere. If I had been 
the first Duchess of England that title would not have 
gained me so much respect as the daughter of William Penn. 
I had the calves of their stalls and the firstlings of their 
flocks." 

There is no doubt that the hesitation of many moderate 
people to join the American cause in the Revolution was 
due to the fact that the extremists rather ruthlessly set aside 
the Penn Charter of 1701 under which they had prospered 
for 75 years, longer than any other constitution of Penn- 
sylvania existed, and which now had become in their eyes 
a venerated instrument. 

Charles Thompson, " the man who spoke the truth," the 
master of the Friends Public School, the Secretary of the 
Continental Congress, the most judicious of the revolu- 
tionary Pennsylvanians writing long after the event, of con- 
ditions about 1775-6 says: "The original Constitution of 
Pennsylvania was very favorable and well adapted to the 
present emergency. The Assembly was annual. The elec- 
tion was fixed for a certain day on which freemen who were 
worth fifty pounds, met, or had a right to meet without 
summons at their respective county towns, and by ballot 
chose not only representatives of the Assembly but also 
Sheriff, coroner, and commissioners for managing the af- 



WILLIAM PENN 43 

fairs of the county and assessors to rate the tax imposed by 
law upon the estates real and personal of the several inhab- 
itants. Members of the Assembly when chosen met accord- 
ing to law on a certain day and chose their own speaker, 
provincial treasurer and sundry other officers. The house 
sat on its own adjournment nor was it in the power of the 
Governor to prorogue or dissolve it. Hence it is apparent 
that Pennsylvania had a great advantage over the other 
colonies which by being deprived by their Governors or 
their legal Assemblies constitutionally chosen were forced 
into conventions." 

The freedom granted by Penn and enforced by the 
Assembly for nearly a century, added to the religious ob- 
jection of the Quakers to war, explains very largely the 
lack of early enthusiasm for independence in the colony. 
They were used to liberty of which they had made mod- 
erate and rational use, and except for the urgency of 
Massachusetts and Virginia would probably not have joined 
the revolutionary party. 

But even though the Governor was such a great man the 
Meetings were not inclined to accord him more than his 
dues. When he had established himself at Pennsbury there 
was an island in the river opposite which had been occupied 
by William Biddle. The main channel ran to the west of 
the island, thus placing it in New Jersey, but Penn claimed 
that it had belonged to a tribe of Indians which had also 
owned the Pennsylvania land adjoining. The controversy 
went so far as to bring it into the meetings to which the 
claimant belonged which appointed committees to examine 
and report. The decision was against the owner and 
governor of Pennsylvania and the dispute ended. 

Penn brought into operation the Puritan notions of the 
time as to amusements. In the first draft of a constitution 
before coming to America he prohibited horse-racing, bull 



44 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

and bear baiting and games of cards and dice. It was also 
decreed that there should be no taverns or ale houses. This 
last was later softened into a requirement that tavern keep- 
ers shall be moral men, an attempt in practice probably 
more successful than the similar one of the present day. A 
traveller of 1755 speaks of the " Indian King " of Phila- 
delphia kept by " one Mr. John Biddle, a very civil, cour- 
teous Quaker," where no liquor is served after eleven 
o'clock and everything is moderate in cost. The Friends, 
however, soon after this came to the conclusion that tavern- 
keeping was unsavory business for their members and dur- 
ing the Revolutionary War tried to get them all out of it 
with apparent success. About 1766 the Philadelphia 
Jockey Club was formed, " Nearly all the principal citizens 
outside the Society of Friends belonged to it." Out of 
deference to this body they adjourned the races during the 
week of Yearly Meeting. 

While Penn and his friends simply transferred to Amer- 
ica the common Puritan ideas of a godly commonwealth 
as to plays, games and sports, the Friends almost alone 
adhered to them up to Revolutionary days. 

Perhaps it was the idea that lotteries were games of 
chance that kept them out of colonial Pennsylvania. A 
century before they were sufficiently in disfavor in the 
country at large, to be legislated against, while universities 
and churches and public improvement generally were build- 
ing themselves up through their agencies, while George 
Washington was willing to accept the presidency of a lot- 
tery company, while a raffle was a common method of 
settling an estate, the Friends were adopting minutes 
against them and the purchase of a ticket was a sufficient 
cause for disownment. Almost if not quite alone among 
the colonial sects, no Friends house of worship or school 
was erected by their aid and no countenance was given to 



WILLIAM PENN 45 

state enterprises. Benjamin Franklin forwarded a lottery 
to raise money for defense but the stricter Friends kept 
clear of assisting him, objecting as they did both to the 
object and the method. 

The Friends had had a long standing contest against 
oaths. They based their objections partly on the biblical 
prohibitions, partly on the implication that they would not 
speak the truth without them. They were absolutely faith- 
ful to this testimony, enduring in England long terms of 
cruel imprisonment rather than violate it. It was a very 
simple matter for any inimical magistrate, private enemy 
or invidious ecclesiastic to ofifer or have offered the oath of 
allegiance to the king, and upon refusal, to place them in 
prison. They would declare their loyalty and challenge 
their persecutors to prove any flaw in this respect but they 
would not swear. No testimony of early Quakerism was 
adhered to more tenaciously in the face of malignant oppo- 
sition than this. 

William Penn himself was in sympathy with this posi- 
tion and meant to relieve them in his province. For a few 
years they had nothing but a very simple form of affirma- 
tion and matters went on smoothly. But when non- 
Quakers came into the province, and Crown officers claimed 
that their acts could only be legalized by an oath, some 
change was necessary. Quaker judges and magistrates 
would not administer them and considerable confusion re- 
sulted. In some sections there were none but Friends com- 
petent to perform the duties of the offices. They could 
either administer or resign. Penn wrote disapproving both 
alternatives. He wrote from England, " I desire you to 
pluck up that English and Christian courage not to suffer 
yourselves to be thus treated and put upon . . . lose what 
you lose like men and Christians." Various compromises 
were proposed but the impossibility of carrying on the 



46 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

work of a mixed province made some arrangement neces- 
sary. A law was passed in 1718 making an affirmation as 
valid as an oath and affixing the same penalties for lying as 
for perjury. Friends gave up offices which necessarily in- 
volved administering oaths, and others were sworn at their 
pleasure. Practically the same laws exist in the United 
States to-day. Whenever however the enemies of Quaker 
rule wanted to put them out of place, they would send a 
petition to England to require the taking of an oath as a 
condition of office holding. It was the threat of such a 
law passing Parliament that brought the resignation of the 
Quaker members of the Assembly in 1756. Others besides 
Friends refused oaths in favor of affirmations, and in the 
popular mind these were ranked among Friends. But all 
members who took or administered oaths were disowned 
by the Society. 

By a strange political trade the law of 1718 which granted 
liberties to Quakers on the subject of oaths included also 
an increase in the list of capital crimes. By Penn's frame 
capital punishment was made to cover the one crime of 
first-degree murder, a notable advance from the English 
code. Sir William Keith, the Deputy-Governor, suggested 
to the Quaker legislature that their contention against 
oaths would better stand against the chance of a Crown 
veto if it were combined with an extension of the list of 
crimes punishable by death. The legislature made no 
objections. The year that William Penn died his merciful 
penal code died also and some dozen crimes were added to 
the criminal list, and so remained through all the colonial 
days. It seems that the Friends of those days did not place 
taking life for burglary, rape, arson and so on by judicial 
process as one of the iniquities against which they must 
protest with the same uncompromising vigor which they 
displayed against oaths. 



WILLIAM PENN 47 

In the main however they were merciful to the prisoners. 
The laws made the jails into work houses and reformation 
rather than example or vindictive wrath was held as the 
object of detention. Until after the Revolution the penal 
system of Pennsylvania was held as something of a model. 
They took also those incapacitated by age or sickness under 
their care. The first hospital of America was their work, 
and the " bettering house " for convalescents was unique. 
Their acceptance of the list of capital crimes seems out of 
harmony with their general history and came up to plague 
them when they tried later to argue the unlawfulness of 
war under Christian standards. 

While the Indian policy of Penn has been a large matter 
of history it probably did not seem to him to be a command- 
ing feature. To treat them with ordinary justice and to 
convert them to Christianity were what he had in view. As 
it turned out the latter did not seem nearly so capable of 
accomplishment through Quaker influence as through Mo- 
ravian. When the Friends told them that there was some- 
thing within them which condemned wrong and encouraged 
right they grunted approval but did not join the Society. 
They respected Quaker morality and responded to good 
treatment, but the Moravian Indians were a considerable 
and loyal Christian group. 

Buying their land was not a new thing in colonial Amer- 
ica. It had been done at times in New England and New 
York and more sparingly in the South. The Swedes and 
Dutch had adopted it in the Delaware Valley before the 
time of Penn. In fact the Indians sold their rights so 
cheaply that it was folly for settlers to refuse the bargain. 
When the Founder instructed his cousin Markham to buy 
up his province by piecemeal in advance of settlement he 
was doing the common as well as the politic thing. He fol- 
lowed this up after he came himself to America only omit- 



48 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

ting the strong drink which Markham had included among 
the purchase goods. He evidently intended never to sell 
to colonists until all native rights were extinguished, and 
where two claimants appeared for the same land, as the Iro- 
quois and Delawares for the Susquehanna Valley, he bought 
of both. This policy worked well in his days for he could 
readily buy ahead of the incoming tide of immigrants. 
Later when the great crowds of Germans and Scotch-Irish 
came in, who cared but little for Indian rights, under the 
less careful management of his sons trouble resulted. The 
Indians began to see that they were losing everything and 
refused to sell and very doubtful measures were resorted 
to to get a title. 

It was not so much the simple fact of purchase or the 
great Shackamaxon Treaty of good will and amity, immor- 
talized in history and on canvas, which the Indians appre- 
ciated, as the fairness of all transactions. This the Indian 
sense of justice would respond to. They were never de- 
ceived by false maps or compass bearings. The measure 
of land by day's walks was fairly made. Furs were bought 
by standard weights and cloth was sold by standard meas- 
ures. While they loved firewater, in their sober moments 
they would admit that the efforts to keep it from them were 
dictated by unselfish motives. All this developed in the In- 
dian mind the feeling that Onas and his brethren were really 
fair minded friends to be trusted; — a feeling which made 
life secure and easy all through the early days of settlement, 
which saved the frontier Quakers from the tomahawk when 
ill-treatment by others had sent the red men on the war 
path, and which lasted for scores of years when the Dela- 
ware Indians were moved first to Ohio, then to Kansas and 
Oklahoma. Other colonial governments did not start with 
the idea of murdering the natives or even of stealing their 
land or supplies. But individual settlers were knaves, per- 



WILLIAM PENN 49 

sonal difficulties arose, the whites stood by one another 
right or wrong, and the trouble led to war for which old 
testament morality easily found an excuse. Penn re- 
strained his traders. Though pressed for funds he refused 
to sell monopolies of Indian trade lest advantage should be 
taken of the natives. An intending purchaser says with 
some surprise, "He (W. P.) is offered great things — 6,000 
pounds for a monopoly in trade which he refused. ... I 
believe truly he does aim more at justice and righteousness 
and spreading of truth than at his own particular gain." 
This explains perhaps more truly than purchases of land 
and treaties, the conditions of peace and quiet for so long a 
time on the Pennsylvania frontiers. Penn practiced only 
ordinary justice and it is a commentary on the times that 
this should have been considered unique. 

The relations were almost too friendly. The Indians 
were indefatigable visitors. The kings and sachems, and 
a large number seemed necessary to maintain traditions, 
would camp on the grounds or in the houses of Friends, on 
every excuse, to be entertained by their rather unwilling 
hosts. The Friends would not usually supply liquor but 
others would, and the guests, not always cleanly, were not 
in the highest degree acceptable. In spite of the verbose 
and metaphorical illustrations of eloquence of the chiefs, 
expressing undying gratitude and helpfulness, which the 
whites would do their best to equal, and the interchange of 
wampum, such a conference usually ended with a sense of 
relief on the part of the entertainers. On the other hand 
it was convenient for the country Friends to leave their 
children in the care of Indian neighbors, which they did 
with a feeling of security when they went to Meeting in 
Philadelphia. Making allowance for differing habits and 
ideas the relations between the races seemed perfectly nat- 
ural and such a thing as war was unthought of till, some 60 



50 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

years after the settlement, white injustice began the aliena- 
tion. 

The most troublesome feature of Penn's government was 
one of which nothing was said or suggested in his frame — 
the matter of martial defense. This was left to be decided 
when the emergency arose. Penn himself had been une- 
quivocal in his condemnation of war in his earlier writings. 
" If they (the Friends) can not fight for it (civil govern- 
ment) neither can they fight against it, which is no mean 
security to any state." He accepted however in his charter 
the post of captain general of the army with power " to 
make war and pursue the enemies and robbers aforesaid 
as well by sea as by land, yea even without the limits of 
said province and by God's assistance to vanquish and take 
them and being taken to put them to death by the law of 
war, etc." This would seem to be ample authority for a 
Quaker to fight if he wanted to. He did not hesitate to try 
to create an ample police force and frequently reproves his 
colonists for their too easy tolerance of vice. There was con- 
siderable pugnacity in his disposition which the exigencies of 
government frequently excited. He evidently found it diffi- 
cult to draw the line between a police and an army, as also 
did his people. They would probably have made a stronger 
case if they had taken the position that the objection was to 
the methods of warfare, the killing, the invasion of rights, 
the hatred engendered, which are inevitable accompani- 
ments, which violate Christ's idea of the dominance of love, 
and which did not necessarily exist in police duty, exer- 
cised for protection of life and property rather than for 
destruction. 

They said in effect: We are not absolute non-resistants 
but we stop resistance when it becomes in itself criminal 
according to the moral law as our consciences see it. We 
do not define the exact line where criminality begins but war 



WILLIAM PENN 51 

and its practices are for us manifestly over the line and 
therefore we can not accept any responsibility. 

His great plan for a diet of nations of 1693 to which all 
disputes should be presented for settlement, a plan far in 
advance of his times, contains a clause which seems to en- 
dorse an international police, which practically would be 
an army. He says: 

" If any of the sovereignties that constitute these imperial 
states shall refuse to submit their claims or pretensions to 
them or to abide and perform the judgment thereof and 
seek their remedy by arms or delay their compliance be- 
yond the time prefixt in these resolutions, all the other sov- 
ereignties united as one strength shall compel the submis- 
sion and performance of the sentence, with damages to the 
suffering party, and charges to the sovereignties that obliged 
their submission." 

This may or may not mean a military force when political 
and economic pressure fail. In another part of his scheme 
we find the following: " Their Saviour has told them that 
he came to save not to destroy the Lives of Men; to give 
and plant peace among men; and if in any sense he may 
be said to send war, it is the Holy War indeed, for it is 
against the Devil and not against the persons of men." It 
is evident therefore that even in this great plan so far in 
advance of his time, so in harmony with the best apparent 
tendencies of our time, intended to bring actual results 
among nations as they were, his place for an armed force 
would be slight. 

The basic idea, as nearly as one can tell, of the Friends 
in Pennsylvania seems to have been freedom of conscience 
for every one on both sides, on the question of war. They 
themselves would not serve in an army or support it except 
in so far as war taxes were so inextricably mixed with others 
that they could not well draw any line. Rather than do so 



52 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

they would give up place, and if necessary suffer distraint 
of goods. They would also have gone to jail as happened 
during the Revolutionary War. The supremacy of con- 
science over any state commands was a well developed and 
undoubted part of their doctrine. 

On the other hand they would not interfere with those 
who thought that armed defense was a duty. The 
Assembly refused to enact laws which required men to serve 
in the militia, because it was known that the Friends would 
not obey and even if the law made allowance for con- 
scientious objectors, they would not force others to a 
service which they declined for themselves. Voluntary 
militia were formed by Franklin and others for frontier 
protection at private expense, and the only objection made 
by the Quaker Assembly was to the taking of farm laborers 
before their debt for passage money, for which they had 
agreed to work for a term of years, had been liquidated. 
Hence appeared the convenience of a non-Quaker Dep- 
uty-Governor which Penn provided. He could if necessary 
raise a militia, or announce an English declaration of war, 
or build a fort when he could get the means, without any 
protests from conscience. Thus in 1689 when Governor 
Blackwell was at the head of affairs, it was proposed that a 
militia be formed to protect the province against a possible 
attack by the French. His mixed Council was asked to 
aid. The non-Quaker part approved. The Friends desired 
not to be consulted. Samuel Carpenter said: " I am not 
against those that will put themselves into defence but it 
being contrary to the judgment of a great part of the people 
and mine too I can not advise the thing. ... If we must be 
forced to it I suppose we shall choose rather to suffer than 
to do it, as we have done formerly." " We would not tie 
other hands but we can not act." 

Thus matters stood in the following years. The 



WILLIAM PENN 53 

Assembly would not vote money for warlike measures di- 
rectly. Once they extracted a promise from the Governor 
that " it should not be dipt in blood." Once they sent word 
to the King that they would obey his commands " as far as 
our religious persuasions shall permit." Once again they 
said, " Though we can not for conscience sake comply . . . 
yet in point of gratitude of the Queen for her great and 
many favors to us we have resolved to raise a present of 
500 pounds." 

The usual preamble to a money bill became at a later 
date " As many of the people of the province are of the 
people called Quakers who though they do not as the world 
is now circumstanced condemn the use of arms in others yet 
are principled against it themselves, etc." This position, 
that fighting is right for those who thought so and wrong 
for others, may do for the determination of personal duty, 
but if they believed that right things were good for the state 
can hardly be defended. As legislators for the province 
every deviation from strict rectitude, as they understood it, 
was in the interests of bad government which they were 
bound to discourage. It must be admitted however that 
these early Pennsylvanians were traveling over unknown 
and difiicult ground. It was the first attempt to govern a 
country on principles of absolute right. They succeeded 
for 70 years with great success by a reasonably close ad- 
herence to principle. Each slight compromise they hoped 
would be the last. When the line of manifest infidelity was 
passed they resigned rather than make the further sacrifice 
of principle. 

Liberty and Peace were the two great ideals committed 
to them. The one has triumphed and become a national, as 
soon it will be a world ideal. Peace is delayed but it too 
will be triumphant and it will be recognized that the pioneer 
work was done in the province of William Penn. 



54 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Bancroft sums up the attempt of William Pemi: " Thus 
did Perm perfect his govermnent. An executive dependent 
for its support on the people; all subordinate elective offi- 
cers elected by the people; the judiciary dependent for its 
existence on the people; all legislation originating exclu- 
sively with the people ; no forts, no armed force, no militia ; 
no established church; no differences of rank; and a harbor 
opened for the reception of all mankind of every nation, of 
children of every language and every creed: — could it be 
that the invisible power of reason would be able to order 
and restrain, to punish crime and to protect property." 

One can imagine with what boundless enthusiasm, with 
these ideals struggling into action, William Penn in October, 
1682, sailed up the Delaware in The Welcome, surveyed his 
noble province spread out before him and consecrated him- 
self to his life work. In the bloom of manhood, having 
already done great things, he must have felt that the great- 
est were yet to come. The problem was still to be solved, 
hidden rocks might wreck him, but relying on his own fer- 
tile brain, the support of his coreligionists, and more than 
all upon the Divine aid which he had preached and expe- 
rienced in the past he was ready to try the Holy Experi- 
ment. 



THOMAS LLOYD 

The Lloyds of Dolobran in Montgomeryshire were an 
ancient and honorable family which claimed descent from 
the old princes of Wales. Thomas Lloyd was born Feb- 
ruary 17th, 1640. As were also his older brothers Charles 
and John he was educated at Jesus College, Oxford. Both 
Charles and Thomas joined the Society of Friends and, 
especially the former, suffered severely in person and estate 
on account of their fidelity to its principles. 

These Welsh Friends took a certain un-Quaker-like pride 
that they were descendants of the old Britons, a proud and 
warlike people who had never been conquered. Yet George 
Fox with his preaching of peace and Divine communion 
and the simplicity and sincerity of life which flowed from it 
made a deep impression upon them. A minister of Denbigh- 
shire heard of him and sent two of his congregation " to trie 
the Quakers." Fox in his Journal tells the result: "When 
these triers came down among us the power of the Lord 
overcame them, and they were both of them convinced of 
the truth. So they stayed some time with us and then re- 
turned into Wales, where afterwards one of them departed 
from his convincement, but the other, whose name was 
John ap John, abode in the truth and received a gift in the 
ministry to which he continued faithful." 

John ap John became the apostle of Quakerism in Wales. 
He aided in buying the Barony of William Penn, but he 
never came to America. He died at a great age, venerated 
as a patriarch of the flock. 

Equally influential with him was Richard Davies. He 

55 



56 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

met an itinerant preacher who had some influence with him, 
but his Quakerism seems to have arisen almost spontan- 
eously. The thee and the thou, the refusal to doff the hat, 
to swear, and to make forcible resistance, the confident be- 
lief in direct teaching as a practical guide in all matters, 
the silent worship and the unconquerable sense of duty, 
sprang fully developed into being. He went to London to 
enter into business, but the need of his Welsh neighbors 
pressed on his heart. He tells the story of his courtship, 
preparatory to his migration: '' So the Lord gave me a little 
time, and he alone provided an help-meet for me; for I 
prayed unto Him that she might be of His own providing, 
for it was not yet manifest to me where she was, or who she 
was. But one time, as I was at Horslydown meeting in 
Southark, I heard a woman Friend open her mouth, by way 
of testimony, against an evil ranting spirit, that did oppose 
Friends much in those days. It came to me from the Lord, 
that that woman was to be my wife, and to go with me to 
the country, and to be an help-meet for me. After meeting 
I drew somewhat near to her, but spoke nothing, nor took 
any acquaintance with her, nor did I know when or where 
I should see her again. I was very willing to let the Lord 
order it as it seemed best to Himself, and therein I was 
easy; and in time the Lord brought us acquainted with one 
another, and she confessed she had some sight of the same 
thing that I had seen concerning her. So after some time we 
parted, and I was freely resigned to the will of God; and 
when we came together again, I told her, if the Lord did 
order her to be my wife, she must come with me to a strange 
country, where there were no Friends but what God in time 
might call and gather to Himself. Upon a little considera- 
tion she said, if the Lord should order it so, she must go with 
her husband, though it were to the wilderness; and being 
somewhat sensible to the workings of God upon her spirit 



THOMAS LLOYD 57 

in this matter, she was willing to condescend in her mind to 
what He wrought in her ; but by hearkening to one who had 
not well weighed the matter, she became disobedient to 
what God had revealed to her, which brought great sorrow 
and trouble upon her. I went to see her in this poor con- 
dition, and I rested satisfied with the will of God in this 
concern, being freely resigned, if the Lord had wrought the 
same thing in her, as was in me, to receive her as His gift 
to me; and after some time, we waiting upon the Lord to- 
gether, she arose and declared before me, and the other 
Friend who had begot doubts and reasonings in her mind, 
that in the name and power of God she consented to be my 
wife, and to go along with me, whither the Lord should order 
us; and I said, in the fear of the Lord, I receive thee as the 
gift of God to me. So I rested satisfied with the will of 
God, for a farther accomplishment of it." 

John ap John and Richard Davies were the apostles of 
Quakerism in Wales. Multitudes joined them and the 
usual persecutions followed. It was only necessary to offer 
them an oath of allegiance to insure a legal imprisonment 
and the ministers and magistrates were in harmony in their 
efforts to crush out the heresy. A priest offended by a fail- 
ure to defeat Davies in argument had an oath tendered him 
and he spent years in jail. 

Charles Lloyd, the chief man of the district, was reached 
by the power and fidelity of the Friends. Richard Davies 
tells the story: ''There came in Charles Lloyd, of 
Dolobran, who was formerly in commission of the peace for 
Montgomeryshire, and had been in election to be High 
Sheriff of that county, and also several of his well-meaning 
neighbors. 

" The Lord was not wanting, but afforded unto us His 
good presence. Life and power came from Him, that 
reached the hearts and understandings of most of the people 



58 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

then present. . . . The next morning we went to visit 
Charles Lloyd, of Dolobran, who tenderly received us, and 
several that were at the meeting came there that day, where 
we had a sweet, comfortable, refreshing time, in the pres- 
ence of the Lord. . . . 

" The report of this meeting went through the country, 
some saying that most of that side of the county were 
turned Quakers. 

" Whereupon divers were sent for, before Edward, Lord 
Herbert, Baron of Cherbury, to a place where he then lived, 
called Llyssin, about 3 miles from Dolobran. 

" After some discourse with them, Lord Herbert sent 
them to Welshpool to prison, for refusing to take the oaths 
of allegiance and supremacy which they refused, because 
they could not swear at all, they being six sent together, 
viz., Charles Lloyd, Hugh David, Richard David, Cad- 
wallader Edwards, Ann Lawrence, and Sarah Wilson." 

Charles Lloyd w^as " put into a little smoky room and did 
lie upon a little straw," but his brother Thomas interceded 
for him and he was allowed to hire a prison for himself 
where the Friends went to hold meetings. This condition 
of semi-imprisonment lasted from 1662 till, ten years later, 
Charles II made his declaration of indulgence which opened 
many prison doors and Charles Lloyd was able to return to 
Dolobran. Thomas Lloyd was liberated at the same time.^ 

In 1660 the Lloyd brothers had a friendly public dis- 
cussion with the Bishop of Asaph, turning principally on the 
necessity of water baptism. ^ 

* In the Journal of George Whitehead printed in 1725 we find 
an interesting description of the efforts made to circulate this 
declaration of indulgence so that official information could reach 
all the prisons including certain remote districts of England and 
Wales. 

^ The manuscript account of this discussion is now in the cus- 
tody of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 



THOMAS LLOYD 59 

It was a temperate and courteous occasion. The Bishop 
said " He did not expect so much could be said by any on 
so little warning and that he did not expect so much civility 
among the Quakers." "He highly commended Thomas 
Lloyd " who had the chief part for the Friends, but the dis- 
cussion made no converts to either side. 

The toleration of Charles II. did not last long. Sometimes 
it was the refusal to swear, sometimes it was the wearing of 
the hat, sometimes attendance at meetings, that was the 
excuse, but back of it was the hope to check the preaching 
which was depopulating the old churches and introducing 
new customs in religion and society. There was the con- 
tinual prospect of imprisonment, of distraint of goods, of 
civil disabilities, of popular opprobrium awaiting the con- 
verts. With such a home-loving people the trial must have 
been very sore indeed to induce them to consider expatria- 
tion. 

There now opened a prospect which would rob this last 
remedy of some of its severity. William Penn had secured 
Pennsylvania as a haven of rest for Quakers, a New 
Wales, where they could retain their old language and cus- 
toms and have free course for their new religion. 

So a delegation of them including John ap John, Richard 
Davies and Charles Lloyd went up to London to see Penn. 
They asked for a " Barony " where they might preserve all 
that was dear to Welshmen, free from the intrusion of oth- 
ers, free in local matters from governmental interference 
and of course free from molestation in matters of con- 
science. 

There is unfortunately no writing to prove exactly what 
was promised, and probably never was. Penn wrote his 
Surveyor Thomas Holme that sufficient Welshmen were 
coming to occupy 40,000 acres and adds, '' I do charge thee 
and strictly require thee to lay out said tract." As Hugh 



60 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Roberts wrote him ten years later, " I can truly say that 
many of us had never come here but because of the love and 
unity and confidence we had in thee." 

The tract was laid out. It began opposite Philadelphia 
and extended westward and northward along the Schuyl- 
kill River, the country now traversed by the main line of the 
Pennsylvania R. R., many of whose stations still perpetu- 
ate the Welsh names. 

The stream of immigration began immediately and cer- 
tain parts of Wales were almost depopulated. Large tracts 
of 5000 acres were bought by the more wealthy and divided 
among others. The whole of the 40,000 acres was not im- 
mediately taken how^ever and this made trouble later. But 
within and around the original tract many Welshmen, 
Quakers and others found homes. 

The leaders of the Quaker movement in Wales however 
did not come. They bought land for their more impecu- 
nious brethren but their place was at home where their suf- 
ferings were beginning to conquer the spirit of persecution. 
They lived long enough to see the Toleration Act of Wil- 
liam and Mary in 1691 grant them the right of affirmation 
instead of the oath and other liberties which made them 
reasonably secure from jailing, though many political and 
social disabilities still remained to trouble them. 

The younger son, Thomas Lloyd, cast in his lot with the 
immigrants and became the leader not only of Welsh inter- 
ests in Pennsylvania, but as well of the state and church in 
the colony. Thomas Lloyd landed in Philadelphia on 6th 
month (August) 20, 1683. He was promptly seized upon 
both by the meeting and the state for important services. 

In these early daj's it was difficult to separate the minis- 
ter and the magistrate. The same men held official posi- 
tions in church and state. The Councilmen and Assembly- 
men were frequently preachers. The legislative meetings 



THOMAS LLOYD 6i 

were opened by a period of silent devotion, and the re- 
ligious meetings had to change their times of holding to 
suit the secular courts. All the functions of the Holy Ex- 
periment were religious and all the religious arrangements 
needed the aid of secular wisdom. It is convenient how- 
ever in the narrative to separate the activities of Thomas 
Lloyd. In each case his strong qualities of leadership, and 
perhaps also some deference paid to rank when that rank 
won respect by the personality of the man, gave him imme- 
diate preeminence. No one could dispute this, except dur- 
ing that short time of about a year when the proprietor 
worked by his side. The Quaker would not remove his hat 
in the presence of priest or magistrate, protector or king, 
but he had to recognize ability and learning, and the qual- 
ities which gentle nurture and college training necessarily 
produced. 

The first record we have of a meeting appointment was 
about two months after his arrival when he was made a 
member of a committee to repair the meeting house. Im- 
mediately following this he was appointed on another whose 
miscellaneous duties were to care for the poor, renovate the 
property, encourage Friends to attend meeting and raise 
money for general purposes. Then followed all sorts of 
duties, to write epistles to England, to adjust quarrels 
among citizens, to sign certificates of membership when a 
ship was about to sail for England. In practically every 
case his name was first mentioned on the committees, which 
either meant chairmanship or a recognition of superior 
fitness. 

His most serious service as well as the most harassing 
for a sensitive man, for it meant the breaking of intimate 
friendships, was in connection with George Keith. The 
two scholars had been associated on many important labors 
in the church, and now they were to be the leaders in oppos- 



62 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

ing parties which shook Philadelphia Quakerism to its 
depths. Personalities were used unsparingly, at least on 
one side, and the matter was fought out to its bitter ter- 
mination. 

George Keith was bom in Scotland about 1638 and edu- 
cated as a Presbyterian. He studied at the University of 
Aberdeen, and received the degree of Master of Arts from 
that institution. Bishop Burnet says that he "was the most 
learned man ever in the Quaker sect, well versed both in 
Oriental tongues and in philosophy and mathematics." 
About 1663 or 1664 he joined the Friends, and for twenty- 
seven years was in favor, sharing with the other leaders of 
the Society the full measure of writing, public discussion 
and persecution. He had the true spirit of the early 
Friends. He said in 1665: 

"It lay upon me from the Lord to depart from these 
teachers who could not point me to the livmg knowledge ot 
God where I could find it; and I came and heard naen and 
women who were taught of God who pomted me to the true 
principle; and though some of them could not read a letter 
yet I found them wiser than all the teachers I ever formerly 
had been under." 

Many other of his testimonies are eloquent of the great 
peace and rapturous joy that came into his heart as the 
result of the Quaker teaching of God's direct communion 
with men and his own experience of it. He found "the 
gates of the heavenly paradise" opened in himself and came 
to have a great love for all mankind. It is unnecessary for 
our purpose to go over the details of his early life. His 
books and sufferings both betray the unflinching spirit of 
the early Quaker apostle. He had his full share of impris- 
onments and beatings, which he bore with humility. He 
was especially effective in public discussions and vigorously 
argued his new convictions before hostile audiences of 



THOMAS LLOYD 63 

Presbyterian divines. In 1670 he published his "Benefit, 
Advantage and Glory of Silent Meetings," a most sympa- 
thetic treatment of the subject written in Aberdeen prison. 
"There are immediate revelations now-a-days" is the em- 
phatic point. In 1675 he debated in company with Robert 
Barclay the principles of his sect before the students of 
the University of Aberdeen. He joined with George Fox, 
William Penn, and Robert Barclay in a visit to Germany, 
and worked in great unity with them. In 1684 he came to 
New Jersey where as surveyor he laid out the division line 
between East and West Jersey. In 1689, at the opening 
of the Friends' Public School, he was made headmaster, but 
gave it up in a year, finding that his abilities needed freer 
scope than in a school of young boys. Up to this time no 
serious ripple of discontent with Friends or of Friends with 
him seems to have appeared. 

There now began to come out in his sermons and dis- 
courses certain doctrinal views, which were looked upon 
with suspicion by many Friends and received with enthusi- 
asm by others. He charged that Friends had in their 
preaching of the inward Christ neglected the outward. He 
asserted that ministers declared that they could be saved 
by the Christ within them " without anything else," and 
hence that they undervalued the historic Christ and the 
Scriptures. 

These doctrinal questions were mingled with others of a 
more practical nature. He charged a general slackness in 
the administration of the Discipline. The magistrates were 
often ministers, and in their civil functions would arrest 
offenders by force but without loss of life or limb. This 
Keith declared to be inconsistent with the profession of non- 
resistance of evil. 

In these early days the civil and ecclesiastical powers 
were so closely united in practice, if not in theory, that it 



64 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

was difficult to distinguish them, and disputes in one court 
were easily transferred to another. 

There were doubtless, owing to the emphasis Friends 
placed on inspiration as the sole endowment for the minis- 
try, a number of crude and narrow preachers among them. 
The doctrine of direct divine leading unto all truth was so 
simple and had such sanction from the leaders of the So- 
ciety that it is not surprising that it constituted for many 
the one staple subject of discourse. A scholar like George 
Keith, whether in general harmony with them or not, could 
not fail to see the lack of perspective and breadth of such 
men. That there was no ground for his doctrinal charges 
would be difficult to maintain. That Friends denied the 
offices and failed to recognize the divinity of the Christ of 
Judea was in answer to his challenge emphatically contra- 
dicted by official assertions both in Pennsylvania and Lon- 
don. The Friends across the water sent a special message 
urging a full acceptance of the biblical account of Christ, 
while not weakening in the least in their belief that the light 
of Christ reached all men whether they had this account or 
not. The leading Philadelphians issued another paper de- 
fining their position in full in the same strain. It was urged 
upon Keith that the doctrinal shortcomings of individuals 
should not be used against the Society. It was also urged 
that for a score of years while the same conditions existed 
he had been a strong defender of its teachings. 

It was quite as much the spirit as the doctrine of George 
Keith to which the Friends objected. He loved contro- 
versy, and in the days when he was in favor used the se- 
vere language of his time against the opponents of Quaker- 
ism. His open arguments with Cotton Mather and other 
New England divines left but little to choose between them 
as to the courtesies of debate. But to call the leaders of the 
Yearly Meeting by opprobrious names, to get excited and 



THOMAS LLOYD 65 

angry in discussion, and to make statements which he had 
to retract, were evidences of "brittleness" of temper, accord- 
ing to his opponents, which were inconsistent with a claim 
to spiritual guidance. He was evidently hot-tempered and 
pugnacious. He called Thomas Lloyd, then Deputy-Gov- 
ernor, and a man of amiable disposition and excellent abil- 
ities and education, " an impudent man and a pitiful 
governor," challenged Lloj^d to send him to jail, and said 
that " his back had long itched to be whipped." A magis- 
trate he called " an impudent rascal," and a meeting of min- 
isters he said were " come together to cloak heresies and 
deceit, and that there were more damnable heresies and 
doctrines of devils among the Quakers than among any 
profession of Protestants." 

It was an age of rough controversy. His opponents did 
not spare him. Possibly they better controlled their tem- 
per in debate, but in the title-page to one of their works 
written in cold blood a little later the author speaks of 

"... the apostate convicted ... in which his apostacy 
from the Truth and enmity against it is manifested, his 
Deceit Hypocricie and manifold prevarications are dis- 
covered, his false Quotations Lyes and Forgeries out of the 
Quakers Books are detected, etc." 

and even the courteous Thomas Story calls him " that 
contentious apostate from the Truth of God once made 
known to him." 

Matters could not abide in this state. Keith had com- 
plained to the Ministers' Meeting against William Stock- 
dale, charging him with saying that Keith had preached two 
Christs. Stockdale denied the charge, and in reply said 
that Keith had called him " an ignorant heathen." The 
meeting blamed them both and tried to make peace. But 
it was too late. Thomas Lloyd and twenty-seven other 
ministers issued a temperate epistle presenting the troubles 



66 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

they had with Keith, earnestly appealing to him to be rec- 
onciled and to lay down the separate meeting which he was 
then engaged in setting up, and repudiating him as an au- 
thorized minister among Friends. 

The ministry and the magistracy were so associated that 
Keith in one of his pamphlets laid himself open to the 
charge of sedition and disturbance of the peace by reviling 
Samuel Jenings, who was as an ecclesiastic strongly opposed 
to Keith, and as a judge and magistrate the author of certain 
acts against privateers which Keith bitterly attacked. The 
Grand Jury brought in a true bill, and Keith and a friend 
were fined five pounds each, which fine was never collected. 
The Justices imposing this fine were all Friends and among 
Keith's strongest antagonists. They said in an explanation 
to the public that they would endure all personal reflections 
and attacks upon their religious body in quiet, but the 
pamphlets tended to revile state ofiicials and incited to 
oppose the administration of justice. 

These trials bring out the prominence of ministering 
Friends in civil positions, a prominence to which Keith and 
his friends with some justice objected, but which naturally 
resulted from the Friendly conception of the absence of any 
definite line of distinction between the preachers as a class, 
and the other spiritual members of the body. 

" The Meeting of Ministering Friends " and in Seventh 
Month (September) 1692 the Yearly meeting itself were the 
ecclesiastical courts into whose hands George Keith now 
fell. The latter body after a careful investigation de- 
clared: 

" We find it our duty to join with our brethren in their 
testimony against that spirit of reviling, railing, lying, 
slandering, and falsely accusing which hath risen and acted 
notoriously in George Keith and his adherents which hath 
led them into a mischievous and hurtful separation. 



THOMAS LLOYD 67 

This paper is signed by over 200 Friends beginning with 
Thomas Lloyd, including Pastorius and nearly all those 
prominent in church and state. 

Keith now became an avowed leader of a new sect, 
gathered out of the large body of Friends. He set up 
meetings in Philadelphia, Burlington, and Bucks County. 
His eloquence, learning, and previous high standing brought 
many to his ranks. The denial of the outward Christ was 
his main subject of attack. In these days he had among 
other public controversies one with James Dickinson, an 
English minister, in which, according to the account of 
Dickinson's companion, he was vanquished " and went away 
in great wrath." Such discussions and voluminous writ- 
ings fanned the separating spirit. 

It was said many times that Keith's doctrinal attacks 
upon the main body of Friends could be all answered by his 
own earlier writings, and after examining these one is in- 
clined to think the statement true. He had often pleaded 
the sufficiency of the Divine Light to lead into doctrinal 
truth, into correct living, into right public preaching and 
praying ; and it is impossible to note any difference between 
his views and those of his friend and fellow-worker and 
sufferer, Robert Barclay. The charges he now made 
against the Philadelphia Friends seemed to indicate a 
change in himself. The main one, that Friends considered 
the Light within sufficient, " without something else," was 
one to which his own early statements made him quite as 
fairly liable to attack as his opponents. But they both 
asserted in positive terms the ordinary orthodox position 
as to the outward Christ and the Scriptures. It seems 
impossible to reconcile the Keith of 1670 with the Keith of 
1691 and later. Of course he had a perfect right to change 
his position as to these matters, but he never fairly ad- 
mitted the change. 



68 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

In a public discussion Thomas Lloyd had said that one 
might be saved without the outer revelation of Christ if he 
had had no opportunity to know it. But Keith said that 
this was impossible, and that if such were Lloyd's views 
" he could not own him as a Christian brother, though he 
might be a devout heathen." This is hardly compatible 
with his earlier statement, " God himself ... is objectively 
manifest so that he can be heard, seen, tasted, and felt if 
all Scripture words were out of our present remembrance," 
or with many other similar statements. In 1670 he had de- 
fended Friends against Robert Gordon, who made against 
them the same charges he was now preferring against the 
Philadelphians. 

The controversy was now carried to London by Keith 
himself, where we may leave it with the statement that Lon- 
don Friends including William Penn disowned his spirit, 
and after a hot controversy he joined the Established 
Church, was ordained a minister, and later traveled through 
the colonies gathering recruits among his own followers and 
others into the fold. 

His " Keithian Quakers " in Pennsylvania formed an op- 
position body, separate from the main organization of 
Friends, and always opposing their political leadership. 
The latter days of Thomas Lloyd were embittered by their 
attacks, but this only seemed to increase the loyalty of his 
friends.' The Keithian party soon dwindled and disap- 
peared but smouldering feelings of hostility did not entirely 
vanish for a decade or more. 

Thomas Lloyd entered the lists unwillingly and only 
when he saw that no other authority but his could stay the 
tide Hugh Roberts, a friend of William Penn,^ writing 
presumably in 1694, tells the story with deep feeling but 

» Pennsylvania Magazine, Vol. 18, p. 205. 



THOMAS LLOYD 69 

evident fairness and his testimony is supported by all we 
know of the matter. 

" my dear frd there another thing yt trubles me very 
much yt is in one of ye two epistles yt cam from ye two 
weekes meeting in London, if I doenot mistake they writ as 
if ye difrence or falling out was between ye two scolars and 
all ye rest but parties of both sides, if you judge so I tell 
thee you judge hard of all, and you are in a great mistake 
for I know to the contrary for Tho. LI: was not concernd 
a long time after he broke out and I know he did endevour 
a prswayd both frds and to gain upon him as much as 
any man amongst us, and for a long tim ye difrence did not 
at all apear between Tho LI and he, but at last when he 
could not be pervaild upon but he rund frds down at straint 
rate becaus they refused to subscribe his creed with many 
other things of his (illegible) which frds could not joyn 
withall, it is true Tho. LI. was forcd to apear, but as soon 
as he apeard though very meeke Loving and tender he 
began to be mor eger at him than any, for he thought if he 
could but run him down he could deal well inufe with the 
rest, and after this it is true Tho was forced to stand in ye 
front, being beter quarif (torn) amongst us, this I do be- 
lieve yt ther is not a man amongst us yt can truley lay to 
his charg not as much as a hasty word or unsavry word in 
all ye discours yt he had with him from first to Last but 
always cald him his ffrd G. K. but I have heard many 
a time G K abusing him calling him a poe a hyppocrit 
an impudent man with abundance of such unsavrey ex- 
pressions." 

The controversy was certainly something more, as Hugh 
Roberts indicated, than a theological contest between two 
scholars equally virulent and ambitious for leadership. 

On the same boat with Lloyd came Francis Daniel Pas- 
torius, the pioneer of the great German emigration to Penn- 
sylvania. Pastorius could not then speak English, nor 
Lloyd' German but he had been educated at Oxford and 
so had the continental pronunciation of Latin. 



70 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

"Alone with him I could in Latin then commune, 
Which tongue he did pronounce right in our German way." 

For William Penn Pastorius had an unbounded admira- 
tion which he expressed in many ways. " My pen," he 
says, " is too weak to express the lofty virtues of this Chris- 
tian, for such he is indeed." This esteem lasted through all 
their difficulties about the assignment of land and through 
Penn's troubles in England. The proprietor cordially re- 
turned the appreciation. When in the country he regularly 
met Pastorius in a social way, and in reply to his father in 
Germany gave a most affectionate tribute in Latin to the 
virtue of the distinguished son. Pastorius could not re- 
sist the temptation to drop into verse at every suitable 
opportunity and when Penn reached his colony a second 
time in 1699 he was met by a long and most appreciative 
metrical welcome. 

But scarcely second to Penn, Pastorius loved Thomas 
Lloyd. The two scholars had common knowledge, common 
mystical ideas, and common interests in the colony. They 
were both strongly opposed to George Keith and worked 
side by side in many church affairs. In fact Pastorius 
tells 

" We never disagreed nor were at variance 

Because God's sacred Truth (whereat we both did aim) 

To his endeared friends is every where the same. 

Therefore 'twas he that made my passage short at sea, 

'Twas he and William Penn that caused me to stay 

In this then uncouth land and howling wilderness 

Wherein I saw that I but little should possess. 

And if I would return to my father's house 

Perhaps great riches and preferments might espouse." 

Whittier tells us 

" With lettered Lloyd on pleasant morns he strayed 
Where Sommerhausen over vales of shade 
Looked miles away, by every flower delayed, 



THOMAS LLOYD 71 

Or song of bird, happy and free with one 
Who loved like him to let his memory run 
Over old fields of learning and to sun 

Himself in Plato's wise philosophies 
And dream with Philo over mysteries 
Whereof the dreamer never finds the keys." 

Pastorius' sympathy with Lloyd extended to his daugh- 
ters, whose acquaintance he also made on the boat, and 
long after when they were wives and mothers he wrote them 
a long poem, from which the preceding extracts are taken, 
ending with lines: 

" Thus I am finishing my homely lines and crave 
Dear shipmates, your excuse that I so boldly have 
With doggrels troubled you. Farewell, remembering me 
Who am your loving and affectionate F. D. P." 

At the risk of forgetting that this is a biography of Lloyd 
rather than of Pastorius it is interesting to note the rela- 
tion of the German scholar to other Friends, while he 
served as teacher in the Friends Public School. 

On 10 mo. 31st, 1697 Samuel Carpenter and James Fox 
were authorized by the Monthly Meeting of Philadelphia 
" to treat with Daniel Pastorius and Thomas Makins " and 
a month later they are authorized to engage them at forty 
pounds each yearly. The school was to open on the first of 
first month (March), 1698 "over the meeting house." 
There Pastorius remained two years. Phineas Pemberton 
was then clerk of the Yearly Meeting and an important 
patron of the school. He writes Pastorius shortly after the 
school opened apologizing for the lateness of " My little 
girles " in reaching school on account of illness at home, 
to which Pastorius replies in a courteous letter. Phineas' 
son Israel did not however fare so well. Two months later 
the boy makes this record: 



72 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

''About the 10th day of the 4th month 1698 Francis 
Daniel Pastorius a German one of the school masters at 
Philadelphia, took occation (upon a small difference that 
did arise between me and another scholar) to beate me very 
much with a thick stick upon my head untill the blood came 
out and also on my arms untill the blood started through 
the skin, and both were so swelled that the swelling was to 
be seen so that it caused my clothes to stand out and the 
flesh was bruised that it turned black and yellow and green. 
My father coming to town on the 13th day of the 5th month 
and my sister acquainting him how I had been used took me 
away from the school . . . and sent me into the country 
from which I writ the following epistles." 

One of '' the following epistles " was written to the other 
master, Thomas Makin, and was a warm expression of lik- 
ing for him and a different feeling for " another " who al- 
ways gave him " rough answers." 

Thomas Makin naturally felt that the withdrawal would 
affect the reputation of the school and WTote the father 
that he would give Israel studies under other masters than 
Pastorius and the appeal seems to have been successful. 

The German schoolmaster was evidently choleric and 
thoroughly believed in the rod. We may if we choose 
reconcile this with his conduct as a magistrate as given in 
the Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 

" Whatever legal maze he wandered through, 
He kept the Sermon on the Mount in view. 
And justice always into mercy grew. 

No whipping post he needed, stocks nor jail, 
Nor ducking stool; the orchard thief grew pale 
At the rebuke, the vixen ceased to rail." 

But schoolboys needed other discipline than common cul- 
prits, or perhaps Whittier had not read these Pemberton 
letters.^ 

^ Now in the Library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 



THOMAS LLOYD 73 

The Yearly Meeting directed that Pastorius " Primmer " 
should be printed at the expense of Friends. Only one copy 
of this book, at Birmingham, England, is known to be in 
existence. 

Thomas Lloyd's services were demanded by the state 
with equal promptitude after his landing. On the 25th 
day of the 8 mo. 1683 he was made foreman of a Grand 
Jury in a case of counterfeit money. Two months later he 
was made " Master of the Rolls," and in the following 
spring a member of the Governor's Council. 

The legislative body was at this time composed of Coun- 
cil and Assembly. The Council originated all laws which 
to be valid must be confirmed by the elective Assembly. It 
was also the executive body of the colony and hence was 
clothed with great powers. The right to originate laws was 
soon taken from it by the growth of the democratic senti- 
ment in the province and after 1701 it was completely shorn 
of legislative power, and became simply an advisory board, 
appointed by the Governor. A seat in it was however 
always an honor, and the list of provincial councillors con- 
tains the names of nearly all the prominent men of the col- 
ony. 

After William Penn's return to England in 1684, Thomas 
Lloyd was made President of the Council, and hence the 
chief oflficer of the province till 1688. In February of this 
year Penn appointed five Councilmen as his Deputy: 
Thomas Lloyd, Robert Turner, Arthur Cook, John Sym- 
cock and John Eckley. This arrangement lasted till 
December 1688 when as Lloyd had refused further service 
Captain John Blackwell, an old Cromwellian soldier, not a 
Friend, reached Philadelphia under appointment of William 
Penn to act as Deputy-Governor, and then trouble began. 

Lloyd had also been made keeper of the Broad Seal, 



74 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

without the imprint of which no act of the government 
would be valid. Not approving of certain commissions he 
refused to affix it to them and in this position he was sus- 
tained by a minority of the Council. It is impossible not 
to see the sectarian lines which were gradually being drawn, 
the Friends of prominence generally siding with Lloyd. The 
minutes of the Council declared that Lloyd's friends had 
*' an inordinate affection " for him. When John Symcock 
at the next meeting objected to the adjective the Governor 
insisted that it stand on the records. A Councillor lament- 
ing their inability to do business declared that they had two 
Governors, one inside the Council and one (Thomas Lloyd) 
outside. 

Lloyd had been returned as a member from Bucks 
County, but having committed certain stretches of author- 
ity of doubtful legality, he was charged by the Governor 
with high crimes and misdemeanors and his right to a seat 
refused pending the trial. Another elected member, Sam- 
uel Richardson, was also refused for having spoken slight- 
ingly of the Governor, though he made the vigorous 
remonstrance, " I will not withdraw. I was not brought 
hither by thee and I will not go out by thy order. I was 
sent by the people and thou hast no power to put me out." 
John Eckley was also denied the right to sit for reasons 
which will appear later. Other of the members objected 
to these acts of arbitrary power, and the sessions of the 
Council were taken up by frequent disputes as to their pro- 
priety, and but little real business was transacted. 

The Welsh Tract was one of the subjects of difficulty. 
It had been supposed to be all in Philadelphia County. 
But in 1688 Caleb Pusey and certain other reputable citi- 
zens of Chester County made a request that part of it should 
be transferred to that County because their numbers were 
small and the charges of maintenance burdensome. This 



THOMAS LLOYD 75 

request was fortified by depositions that William Penn had 
stated that such a division should be made, and by some 
maps which supported it. Lloyd, though denied member- 
ship in the Council, was allowed to appear on behalf of 
his countrymen, but all he could do was to ask for more 
time to carry the matter to England that the justice of the 
measure might be more fully considered. Blackwell had 
with him the majority of the Council and the minority were 
willing to concede the reasonableness in a general way of 
the proposition. The act was passed and Merion was 
placed on one side of the line and Haverford and Radnor 
on the other, and so they have remained to this day. 

The Welsh felt deeply aggrieved. Their Barony, al- 
ready shorn of certain powers which they expected to retain, 
was now divided between two counties. At first they re- 
fused to abide by the decision and the men from Haverford 
and Radnor joined with the Merion voters in sending John 
Eckley to the Council, but as already stated he was refused 
admission. 

The future history of the Welsh Tract is interesting. One 
can not but sympathize with the gradual fading away of 
the hopes for an old Wales in the new country. 

They had not taken up their whole tract, and in 1690 
men of other nationalities came in with claims. The 
settlers made an eloquent appeal: " We, the Inhabitants of 
the Welsh Tract in the Province of Pennsylvania in Amer- 
ica, being descended of the ancient Britons, who always in 
the Land of our Nativity, under the Crown of England, 
have enjoyed that Liberty and privilege as to have our 
bounds and limits by ourselves within which all causes, 
quarrels, crimes, and titles were tryed, and wholly deter- 
mined by officers, magistrates, and jurors of our own 
language, which were our equals; having our faces towards 
these counties, made motion to our Governor, that we might 



76 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

enjoy the same here, — to the Intent we might live together 
here, and enjoy our liberty and Devotion; which thing was 
soon granted us before we came into these parts." 

It was decided that if the Welshmen would pay all quit- 
rents since 1684 they might preserve their tract intact. 
They refused the proposition, but expressed a willingness 
to be responsible for the whole 40,000 acres in future. This 
was declined. When it was too late they reconsidered the 
matter and agreed to accept the conditions. But the com- 
missions to others had already been executed. Their polit- 
ical integrity had been broken, and now their social com- 
radeship was threatened. The Barony was about to pass 
away, but the " Great Welsh Tract " became a well marked 
section of the province, leading in enterprise and prosperity, 
up to the time of the Revolution. 

The Friends' meetings were more considerate of Welsh 
sentiment than the state authorities. The Quarterly Meet- 
ing of Chester, in 1700, sent word to the Haverford Friends 
that as they were in their county they should be joined to 
their meeting. But Haverford protested, and the Phila- 
delphia Meeting strongly supported them : " Whereas Hav- 
erford Meeting hath belonged to this Quarterly Meeting 
from the first settlement and for several other reasons this 
meeting unanimously desire that the Monthly Meeting at 
Haverford may not be separated from this our Quarterly 
Meeting "; and so it has remained to this day. 

The separateness of the Welsh settlers now rapidly de- 
parted. Business, marriages, politics drew them into close 
association with the English, and while their brethren in 
the old country retained their language, the new country 
Welshmen, who had so pathetically appealed for national 
peculiarity, had before the Revolution lost it all. 

While Lloyd had failed in the matter of the Welsh set- 
tlement he had proved a strong political antagonist. After 



THOMAS LLOYD 77 

his death Haverford Monthly Meeting spoke of " his meek 
and lamb-like spirit, great patience, temperance and humil- 
ity and slowness to wrath." William Markham however, 
who took sides with Blackwell and kept the minutes of the 
Council, gives a little insight into the turbulent politics of 
the time. 

" The Govr declared ye Council to be adjourned till ye 
next council day, viz: to ye fifth day of ye same week, at 
nine of ye Clock, at ye same place; and Rose up out of his 
place to depart accordingly; upon wch severall of ye mem- 
bers of ye Councill departed. But divers remayned and a 
great deale of confused noise and clamor was Expressed at 
and without the doore of ye Govrs roome, where ye Councill 
had sate, wch occasioned persons (passing by in the streets) 
to stand still to heare, which ye Govr observing, desired ye 
sayd The Lloyd would forbeare such lowd talking, telling 
him he must not suffer such doings, but would take a Course 
to Suppress it, and shutt ye Doore. So he went away, 
attended with severall of ye members of ye Councill, others 
staying behind with ye Governor." 

Other scenes were equally boisterous. One can not but 
feel as he reads the personnel of those who voted against 
Lloyd in the Council that the political differences of the 
Blackwell era had something to do with the Keith con- 
troversy which followed. 

Penn tried to make peace. On 7 mo. 25th 1689 he wrote 
to Blackwell, " I would be as little vigorous as possible, and 
do desire thee by all the obligations I and my present cir- 
cumstances can have upon thee to desist the prosecution of 
T. L. I entirely know the person both in his weakness 
and accomplishment & would ye end the dispute between 
you two upon my single request and command and that 
former inconveniences be rather mended than punished. 
Salute me to the people in general & pray send for J. 
Simcock, A. Cook, John Eckley and Samuel Carpenter & 



78 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANLA 

let them dispose T, L. and Sa Richardson to that comply- 
ing temper that may tend to that loving and serious accord 
yt becomes such a government." 

But Penn from England finally recalled Blackwell. In 
his farewell address the Deputy used words the sincerity of 
which we can hardly doubt. " 'Tis a good day. I have given 
and I do unfeignedly give God thanks for it, for to say no 
worse I was very unequally yoked." He was probably an 
honest but tactless man who did not understand the Quaker 
character, and pugnaciously attempted to override it. 
Thomas Lloyd had undoubtedly proven an " unequal " yoke 
fellow. 

Penn now made two propositions: One was to have three 
names sent to him by vote of the Council, one of whom he 
would appoint as Deputy-Governor. The other was to al- 
low the Council itself to be Deputy-Governor and elect its 
own President. The Council unanimously chose the latter 
and elected Thomas Lloyd President. In this form the 
arrangement continued till 1693, when Penn was deprived 
of his government by the King, and the province placed in 
the hands of Benjamin Fletcher, Governor of New York. 
This period of about four years from 1689 to 1693 was quiet 
and uneventful, as shown in the Colonial Records though 
there is a gap of over two years in the minutes. The politi- 
cal peace speaks for the wisdom of Lloyd's administration 
and its general acceptance by the province. 

When Fletcher came on April 26, 1693 his first act was 
the following: " His excellency having sent for Thomas 
Lloyd, the late Deputy-Governor did offer unto him the 
first place in the Council which he did refuse." This ex- 
ample was followed by other Friends. 

When early in 1695 the province was restored to William 
Penn as Proprietor and Governor, Thomas Lloyd was no 
more. He died at the age of 54. 



THOMAS LLOYD 79 

For a man of quiet instincts his life had been a troubled 
one. Persecuted in Wales, he sought the peace of a Quaker 
province. Immediately he was thrown into the distractions 
of a government of non-experts, jealous of their liberties, 
suspicious of every move that threatened to curtail them, 
uncertain of their powers and crude in their methods. He 
could suffer passively in Wales under unjust laws and their 
unkindly enforcement. But he could not see lost the lib- 
erties which William Penn and his friends had purchased 
in Pennsylvania, when the responsibility for their defense 
rested partly upon him. By common consent the strongest 
man in the province, positions of influence were almost 
forced upon him. He resisted when he could. William 
Penn writes in 1687, " I am sorry that Thomas Lloyd, my 
esteemed friend, covets a quietus, that is young and active 
and ingenious, for from such it is that I expect help, and such 
will not sow, I hope, in vain." And the next year he urges 
him " By all that is reverent, tender and friendly I beseech 
thy care, condescension and help for that poor province." 
Lloyd lived in the province about eleven years during seven 
of which he was at the head of the government. 

Such appeals could not be denied, and so he fought 
through the Blackwell regime and the Keith controversy as 
best he could, keeping the esteem of the best men of the 
province, but suffering, no one knows how much, from the 
bitter attacks upon him. Lover of peace as he was there 
is no evidence that he allowed these attacks to divert him 
from his path of duty. Scholar and mystic by temperament 
and training, he became a politician by force of circum- 
stances. In happier times his religion and his learning 
would have been his cherished objects, but his province and 
his sect owe to him a debt in that he sacrificed fortune and 
the life of lettered ease and spiritual quiet to the stern de- 
mands of political and ecclesiastical battle. 



80 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

His loving Welsh friends of Haverford Monthly Meeting 
leave this memorial of him. 

" The love of God, and the regard we have to the blessed 
truth, constrains us to give forth this testimony concerning 
our dear friend Thomas Lloyd, many of us having had long 
acquaintance with him both in Wales, where he formerly 
lived, and also in Pennsylvania, where he finished his 
course, and laid down his head in peace with the Lord, and 
is at rest and joy with Him for evermore. He was by birth 
of them who are called the gentry, his father being a man of 
a considerable estate, and of great esteem in his time, of an 
antient house and estate called Dolobran, in Montgomery- 
shire in Wales. He was brought up at the most noted 
schools, and from thence went to one of the Universities, 
and because of his superior natural and acquired parts, 
many of account in the world had an eye of regard towards 
him. Being offered degrees and places of preferments, he 
refused them all; the Lord beginning his work in him, and 
causing a measure of his light to shine out of darkness in 
his heart, which gave him a sight of the vain forms, customs, 
and traditions of the schools and colleges. And hearing of 
a poor despised people called Quakers, he went to hear 
them, and the Lord's power reached unto him, and came 
over him to the humbling and bowing his heart and spirit; 
so that he was convinced of God's everlasting truth, and re- 
ceived it in the love of it, and was made willing, like meek 
Moses, to choose rather to suffer affliction with the people 
of the Lord, than the honours, preferments, and riches of 
this world. The earthly wisdom came to be of no reputa- 
tion with him, but he became a fool, both to it and his for- 
mer associates; and through self-denial and taking up the 
daily cross of Christ Jesus, which crucified his natural will, 
affections, pleasures, he came to be a scholar in Christ's 
school, and to learn the true wisdom which is from above. 

"Thus, he departing from the vanities and iniquities of 
the world, and following the leadings, guidance, and in- 
structions of the divine light, grace, and spirit of Christ, 
came more and more to have an understanding in the mys- 
teries of God's kingdom, and was made an able minister of 
the everlasting gospel of peace and salvation, his acquired 
parts being sanctified to the service of truth. 



THOMAS LLOYD 8i 

" His sound and effectual ministry, his godly conversa- 
tion, meek and lamb-like spirit, great patience, temperance, 
and humility, and slowness to wrath; his love to the 
brethren, his godly care in the Church of Christ that all 
things might be kept sweet, savoury, and in good order; his 
helping hand to the weak, and gentle admonitions, we are 
fully satisfied have a seal and witness in the hearts of all 
faithful Friends who knew him, both in the land of his 
nativity and in these American parts. We may, in truth, 
say he sought not himself, nor the riches of this world, but 
his eye was to that which is everlasting, being given up to 
spend and be spent for the truth and the sake of Friends. 
. . . He was taken with a malignant fever the 5th of the 
7th month, 1694, and though his bodily pain was great he 
bore it with much patience. Not long before his departure 
some friends being with him he said, ' Friends, I love you 
all, I am going from you, and I die in unity and love with 
all faithful Friends. I have fought a good fight and kept 
the faith, which stands not in the wisdom of words but in 
the power of God: I have sought not for strife and conten- 
tion, but for the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the 
simplicity of the gospel. I lay down my head in peace, 
and desire you all may do so. Friends, farewell.' 

" On the 19th day of the 7th month aforesaid, being the 
6th day of the sickness, it pleased the Lord to remove him 
from the many trials, temptations, sorrows, and troubles of 
this world, to the kingdom of everlasting joy and peace; 
but the remembrance of his innocent life and meek spirit 
lives wuth us, and his memorial is, and will remain to be, 
sweet and comfortable to the faithful. He was buried in 
the Friends' burying-ground in Philadelphia, aged about 
fifty-four years, having been several years President and 
Deputy-Governor of Pennsylvania." 

The following letter gives some insight into the conditions 
in the colony and the character of Thomas Lloyd. 

'* From Thomas Lloyd to his Friends, belonging to Dol- 
obran Quarterly-Meeting, Wales." ^ 

1 The original of this letter is in the Roberts Collection of Haver- 
ford College. 
a 



82 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 



" Philada. 2d of ye 9thmo 1684. 

" My Dear and Well beloved Friends, 
of, and belonging to Dolobran Q. Meeting, 

" The warm and tender salutation of My love is un- 
feignedly to you, with whom I have convers'd and walked 
some years, in unity. Zeal, Concord and Endeavor'd Serv- 
ice; j^ou are, because of our nearness, familiar, yet Honour- 
able, in my Thoughts and Esteem; The Truth, ' as it is in 
Jesus,' Prosper and encrease Dayly in your minds; and rest 
Bountifully upon your Habitations; 



" It is no New Thing for you to Suffer Joyfully in your 
Persons and Goods; — The Lord gave us strength. Cour- 
age, Satisfaction and Honour Thereby; — WhiPst He is 
before our eyes, & his Holy fear in our hearts. Whether 
in Bonds or free, — in that or this Part of the world ; — our 
Preservation we shall witness; 

" Our Meetings are very full ; I guess we had no less 
Numbers, last first-Day, than Eight Hundred, we are glad 
to see the faces of servicable Friends here, who Come in 
God's freedom; who are Persons of a Good Understanding 
& Conversation; & will Discharge their Stations Reli- 
giously; Such, Will be a Blessing to the Province; — 

" The favourable Revolution of Providence hath founded 
the Government so here. That a man is at Liberty to Serve 
his Maker without Contempt, Discouragement, or restraint; 
Truth indeed Makes Men Honourable, not only here, but 
in most Places at least; But here Truth Receives Good 
Entertainment at first; 

" Our Governor is just Embarking for England, our best 
wishes go with and attend him; He hopes to have an opor- 
tunity, by Testimony or Writing, to Express his Love and 
Remembrance to ye Several Churches of Brittain ; — Our 
friends from the neighborhood are generally well, and Tol- 
erably settled; Tho. Ellis, I. Humphrey, H. Roberts, J. 
Eckley, D. Davis and Many more are usefull and accepted 
among 'st us; — 



THOMAS LLOYD 83 

" In Love I lived with you ; In Love I took my leave of 
you ; — and in Love, I now bid you, a Christian & Brotherly 
Farewell; from your friend and Brother, 

Thomas Lloyd;" 



DAVID LLOYD 

David Lloyd was born in Montgomeryshire, Wale^, in 
1656. Thomas Lloyd speaks of him in a letter as *' my 
kinsman," though the relationship was probably not near. 

Comparatively little is known of his early history. In 
some way he secured an accurate and available knowledge 
of law. His first wife was from Gloucestershire, and it is 
not improbable that he was educated in England. 

In the seething political and religious times of the Com- 
monwealth and later he imbibed the strong republicanism 
with which his name and talents were afterwards so con- 
spicuously associated. Then he joined the Society of 
Friends, as many of the Commonwealth sympathizers did, 
and abjured fighting with material weapons forever. His 
pugnacity was, however, transferred to another field, and 
when in 1686 Penn commissioned him as Attorney-General 
of his new province he little knew what a determined op- 
ponent he was sending over the seas. On " the 5th of ye 
6th Mo. 1686 " he presented his commission to the Council, 
subscribed to the necessary declarations of fidelity to the 
King and Governor and entered upon the duties of his 
oflSce. From this time until his death, in 1731, he was a 
potent factor, possibly as potent as any, considering perma- 
nent results, in the public affairs of the province.^ 

1 Maeaulay in his History makes one David Lloyd an emissary 
in attempting the restoration of James II in 1690-91. The name 
was included with that of William Ponn and a number of noblemen 
and gentlemen in a list of supposed conspirators against William 
and Marj'. It is possible that our David Lloyd went over from 
Pennsylvania for this purpose, though it seems improbable. Deb- 
orah Logan, however, speaks of him as the same person. She also 
says that he was Captam in the "Republican Army," presumably 

84 



DAVID LLOYD 85 

Two months later Patrick Robinson, who appears to have 
been a testy and obstinate official, was discharged from his 
position as Clerk of the Provincial Court, and David Lloyd 
was appointed to the place. He was also made clerk or 
deputy to the Master of the Rolls, Thomas Lloyd. 

As Attorney-General there is only one important case 
with which David Lloyd was associated that has come down 
to us — the case in which William Bradford, the only 
printer of Philadelphia, was charged with issuing a seditious 
libel in connection with the George Keith controversy. 
Lloyd represented the prosecution, and won. Bradford was 
fined, but in the easy-going times the fine was never col- 
lected. It is important as being the first case where the 
seditious character of the publication, as well as the fact of 
printing, was submitted to the jury, and was thus important 
in establishing the freedom of the press.^ 

In the snarl that followed the appointment of Blackwell 
as Deputy-Governor, he showed the militant disposition 
which made his life a continual turmoil. 

There came up in a meeting of the Council the question of 
a criminal whose case had been adjudged by the court of the 
county of Sussex, and the judgment reversed by the Provin- 
cial Court. The copies of the records of the higher court 
being conflicting, David Lloyd was asked to produce the 
original. He refused, saying that the Council had no au- 
thority to give such an order. Then, the minutes state, 
" he was thereupon ordered to withdraw. This was judged 
a high contempt in the said David Lloyd, and for that and 
other unseemingly and slighting expressions of his to the 
Governor and Council," he was discharged from his various 
positions. Thomas Lloyd then came to his rescue by issu- 

that of Cromwell. As he was only two years old when Cromwell 
died, she was undoubtedly mistaken. 
' See Pennypacker's Colonial Cases. 



86 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

ing a commission to him re-appointing him. This Black- 
well conceded he had a right to do as his deputy, but not as 
clerk of the court. Blackwell was probably right, and the 
Lloyds had to recede from their position. David Lloyd 
finally gave up the papers in question, and ultimately re- 
covered his standing. 

In 1693 he was again brought unfavorably before the 
Council. One Charles Butler was charged with passing 
counterfeit coin. The jury found him guilty, and he 
claimed that David Lloyd added to their verdict that it was 
misprision of treason, which would cause a forfeiture of all 
the prisoner's property. In reply Lloyd claimed that his 
act was only a legal form. The Council concluded that it 
was not a proper case for it to decide, but gave an opinion 
that it did not look right to them to give so severe a pen- 
alty for so slight an offense and that there was " a matter 
of law in it against David Lloyd." 

Another instance of a legal character may be cited to 
illustrate his facility in making enemies by the method of 
his proceedings. Francis Daniel Pastorius was the agent 
of the Frankford Company which owned a large amount of 
land in and around Germantown. He was dismissed from 
his position without proper compensation for past services. 
An adventurer now appeared, one Henry Sprogel, whom 
Pastorius calls " a cunning and fraudulent fellow," who had 
come over with the claim that he had bought in Germany 
the rights of several of the owners, and was proceeding to 
eject the innocent settlers by court decree. In company 
with a colleague, he retained David Lloyd, and gave to him 
as a fee 1,000 acres of land to which the title was doubtful. 
Acting on Lloyd's advice, he also bought up the whole bar 
of the province, consisting of three other lawyers, and 
sprung the case upon the court, which decided in his favor 
without a full hearing of the other side. 



DAVID LLOYD 87 

The above is Pastorius's account, and in concluding it he 
gives this verdict: — 

*' If David Lloyd does justify this barbarous manner of 
proceeding and spoiling of widows and orphans, it's more 
than any can do that professes truth, and unless he really 
repent and endeavors to have restitution made to those who 
so deeply suffer, he certainly will be accountable for it at 
the great day of judgment." ^ 

In other letters Pastorius is even more severe, referring 
to him as d-11. Finally he made his complaint to Philadel- 
phia Monthly Meeting, where David Lloyd was a member. 
At the same time a request came from Lloyd to transfer 
his certificate to Chester Monthly Meeting. The double 
question was considered from month to month for six 
months with additions to the membership of the committee. 
Finally, on 9 month 27th 1713 the meeting minuted " How- 
ever, it seems to the meeting to be that which is not of good 
report and therefore desires David Lloyd that he may for- 
bear to have anything further to do towards strengthening 
the parties concerned therein." With this Scotch verdict 
the matter was left. 

In forming a judgment of David Lloyd from these ques- 
tions of legal ethics it is fair to bear in mind that he has 
placed on record no defenses of his action. He used the 
means which as a lawyer were at his command, and which 
many good lawyers at the present day sanction and adopt. 
The accounts of the transactions all come from his political 
and factional opponents. His skill and ability are abun- 
dantly manifest by the results, while his methods would 
doubtless be differently judged were we to hear his own 
statements. He, apparently, both in meeting his legal and 
political enemies, had no thought of protecting himself in 
history. The voluminous writings of Logan and Pastorius 

^ See M. D. Learned's Pastorius, p. 154. 



88 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

bear evidence of the opinion held of him by those whose 
plans he had opposed. That during all his life time he had 
an ardent political following, containing many good men, 
and more often than not defeated the opposition, are facts 
we know from the public records, but not from his pen. 
To the political side of his life we now turn. 
It was as a politician rather than as a lawyer that he will 
ultimately be judged, and here we find most opposite views 
of his character and influence. With some he is the great 
champion of democracy and popular rights against the 
encroachments of the Proprietary and his friends; with 
others he is simply an artful demagogue, using his great 
legal training and undoubted abilities to carry out his plans, 
ofttimes by unscrupulous means, in the midst of a simple 
and trustful community of country Friends, of whose prin- 
ciples he was, or seemed to be, an ardent exponent. We 
will try to state the facts fairly before forming a judgment. 
After holding various minor offices as clerk of the courts 
and of the Assembly, and deputy to certain officials, he was 
in 1693, at the time of the Fletcher regime, when William 
Penn was deprived of his government, elected to the 
Assembly. A year later he was made Speaker. Fletcher 
was opposed by the whole Quaker body in public life and 
Lloyd had a united party with him. The Governor was 
attempting to break down the Penn authority and consti- 
tution, and as Friends had refused to sit in his Council, and 
as this body had the sole power of originating laws, he had 
at the start things pretty much his own way. But when 
these laws were presented to the Assembly, without whose 
sanction they could not be enacted, came Lloyd's chance. 
Every piece of legislation in conflict with popular rights was 
held up, and, after the fashion of the English Commons, 
supplies' were denied pending the Governor's surrender. 
Lloyd was then as always very direct and open in hia 



DAVID LLOYD 89 

statements. On one of the occasions when a committee 
of the Assembly waited on the Governor to explain their 
non-passage of the supply bill, and various circumlocutory 
statements were made, David Lloyd brought the matter to 
a head by the unmistakable announcement, " To be plain 
with the Governor here is the Monie Bill, and the House 
will not pass it until they know what is become of the other 
bills sent up." 

The first contest was over the validity of the charter and 
laws granted by Penn. Fletcher claimed that they were 
superseded by his royal commission. After some sparring, 
the Assembly had to yield. Then an appropriation was 
asked to defend the frontier of New York against the 
French, with whom England was at war. This demand 
struck at the anti-martial principles of Friends, and was 
successfully resisted, or rather postponed by the Assembly. 
The plan of delaying supplies till certain laws were granted 
was now tried in Pennsylvania, and, as in other colonies and 
in England, was successful in extorting one popular liberty 
after another. 

Fletcher's rule only lasted about two years, when the 
government was restored to Penn, who made his cousin 
Markham his Deputy. Markham tried to live up to the 
arbitrary standard of Fletcher, but now both Council and 
Assembly opposed him. Lloyd was now in the former body, 
but remained the champion of democracy. One privilege 
after another was gained, giving the Assembly as well as 
the Council the right to originate laws, and allowing it to sit 
on its own adjournments. All and more than Penn had 
granted was secured. This condition lasted till 1699, when 
Penn, with his secretary, James Logan, came into the 
country, and David Lloyd's easy supremacy was over. 

For he and Logan became bitter enemies. During Penn's 
stay of two years this did not much show itself, but he and 



90 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

his friends had so indoctrinated the colony with ideas of 
freedom that Penn, half reluctantly, was forced to give a 
new charter, that of 1701, which lasted just seventy- five 
years, till abrogated in the opening days of the Revolution- 
ary War. This abolished the Council as a part of the law- 
making power, making it only an advisory body to the Dep- 
uty-Governor, and granted full powers to the Assembly, 
with the Governor's assent, to pass all laws. 

Hitherto Lloyd had seemed to be on good terms with 
Penn, whose commission he had held. But when the Pro- 
prietary sailed for England, leaving Logan his secretary 
and agent, a controversy, both personal and political, which 
in time became very bitter, arose between the Welshman and 
the Irishman. Both had a sort of fearless pugnacity which 
induced plain speaking without any avoidance of direct 
issues. Though their state papers are couched in terms of 
studied courtesy, there was no pains to conceal the differ- 
ences involved between them. 

Each had his party behind him. The most of the best 
educated city Friends, who were also friends of the Pro- 
prietary, were gathered in the ranks with the secretary. 
The country Friends, the great bulk of the population, con- 
cerned for their property and personal rights, followed loy- 
ally the skilful and forceful leadership of David Lloyd. 

A small third party must not be neglected, the Church- 
men, whose leader was Robert Quarry, Judge of the Admi- 
ralty, appointed by the Crown and independent of the Penn 
government. This party was troublesome more because it 
spread in England reports of inefficiency in the province, 
due, as it claimed, to Quaker scruples as to war and oaths, 
than as the result of its direct influence upon popular opin- 
ion. 

David Lloyd was a strong uncompromising champion of 
Friends' views on these subjects and one of his favorite 



DAVID LLOYD 91 

charges against the Penn and Logan party was that relief 
in these matters was not granted, so that Friends could have 
their full share in government without any sacrifice of prin- 
ciple. 

That Logan did not hold the Friendly attitude as to wars 
and self-defense is unquestionably true, and became more 
manifest as he grew older. The Friends that surrounded 
him, however, did, — some of them quite as strenuously 
as did the countrymen, and perhaps with a better apprecia- 
tion of all the factors entering into the matter. Hence on 
occasions they would vote money " for the Queen's use " on 
the general plea that the use the Queen made of it was, as 
Isaac Norris expressed it, " Not our part, but hers." 

Lloyd never compromised. When the Assemblies of 
which he was the Speaker voted money, they made it a con- 
dition that " it should not be dipt in blood," and appointed 
trustees to hold it till they found how it was to be applied. 
He was willing to carry non-resistance to its fullest con- 
clusion, and abruptly closed the question and adjourned the 
Assembly when it was found that the Deputy was not 
inclined to accept the grant on such dubious terms. In 
this particular he was undoubtedly t;upported by the great 
body of Friends in the province. 

The close identity of Friends with the government is 
shown by two addresses passed by the House on the same 
day (May 25th, 1704) and both signed by David Lloyd, 
Speaker. One of these was " The Humble Address of the 
Freemen of Pennsylvania," congratulating " Our Gracious 
Queen Anne " on her accession. The other was " The 
Humble Address of the People called Quakers convened in 
Assembly," also addressed to " Our Gracious Queen Anne," 
asking relief in the matter of oaths, which was approved 
by the Assembly, N. C. D. The Assembly, probably all 
Friends, adopted by the same vote and placed on its min- 



92 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANL^. 

utes the two addresses, in one case as the Freemen 0/ Penn- 
sylvania and the other as the People called Quakers. 

The severity of this controversy lasted from 1701, when 
Penn left the province, to 1710, when Lloyd was completely, 
though temporarily, unhorsed. It was a sad decade for 
Quaker government. It is a mistake to assume, however, 
that the difference was as pervasive in the ranks as it was 
acrid among the leaders. The Province continued to pros- 
per, immigrants came in, houses were built, farms were laid 
out and woods cleared, and the foundations of manj^ a for- 
tune and many a happy home were laid. A generation of 
Quaker politicians was being reared who were learning the 
meaning of self-government and democracy. History deal- 
ing only with men who ruled in Council and Assembly rec- 
ords the serious contests over what seem sometimes small 
matters, but the great body of Friends attended their quiet 
meetings in simple harmony and satisfaction with their lot. 
David Lloyd seems to have expected that a separation in 
meeting might result from the political conditions, but 
fortunately his prediction was not fulfilled. James Logan 
speaks of him as " a discordant in the Friends' meetings for 
business, so much so he expects a separation and purging; 
the young push for rash measures, the old for Penn's inter- 
ests." 

One of the questions of the day was the right of the 
Assembly to come together and adjourn at its pleasure. In 
view of the history of England under the Stuarts, now not 
so very far in the background, it is not a matter of wonder 
that they were sensitive on this point. William Penn had 
granted in his charter of 1701 the right of the popular house, 
to be, with the assent of the Governor, the whole legislative 
body of the Province, to be elected on the 1st of October 
every year without any call from the Governor and to sit 
on the 14th following. The only question remaining was 



DAVID LLOYD 93 

as to its right to adjourn to some fixed date within the year 
of its service. 

When in 1702 there was difficulty in organizing an Assem- 
bly owing to the discordant politics of the Province and 
Territories (Pennsylvania and Delaware) which had hith- 
erto worked together as one Colony, but were now about sep- 
arating, it was suggested that the Governor might adjourn 
the meeting to a future day. Immediately David Lloyd 
sounded the alarm. Though it was only a preliminary con- 
ference, and not an Assembly, the account states: " David 
Lloyd objected to the word adjourn, for the Charter empow- 
ering them to sit on their own adjournments, they would 
betray their trust should they admit of any other adjourn- 
ment." His keen eye for the establishment of a precedent 
which would in any degree threaten popular rights seized 
upon this little point for protest. 

The Governor did not yield the matter ostensibly, but the 
Assembly had the habit of adjourning when it pleased, and 
nothing could be done, so that in time the policy with which 
we are so well acquainted in the United States became fully 
established. 

In 1709 Governor Gookin sent word to the Assembly, " I 
expect the House shall not adjourn any longer than from 
day to day, till the business further recommended to you 
this morning shall be issued." Here was a direct challenge, 
and David Lloyd, then Speaker, accepted it. With an 
unanimous House behind him, he passed resolutions, an- 
nouncing that they would not attend to the business recom- 
mended, and would adjourn when it suited them, which, 
as harvest was approaching, they immediately proceeded 
to do. It is not giving Lloyd too much credit to say that 
his influence largely secured to the people of Pennsylvania 
the invaluable right of an independent legislature. 

Penn was a full believer in civil liberty, as the advanced 



94 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

men of the times construed it, but he was an enthusiast for 
religious liberty and equality among the sects. He placed 
this principle in the forefront of all his constitutions, and 
when he gave the final one in 1701 he asked that his people 
should take the opportunity to propose any provisions 
which would better secure their rights. The most of them 
had not, as he had, any broad conception of the value of 
these intangible matters, but they did want good titles to 
their property, low taxes, good roads, and all the factors 
which would lead to permanent material prosperity. He 
was rather disgusted when in response to his liberal offers, 
the House sent in a reply dealing only with some of these, 
to him, minor matters. 

His financial circumstances were such that he could not 
give away too many of his perquisites, for the expenses of 
government which fell upon him were in excess of his total 
receipts. Hence, some of these matters were left unde- 
termined and afforded grounds of difference. All might, 
however, have been happily adjusted had he remained in 
the country or sent a judicious deputy. But, after the 
death of Andrew Hamilton, whom he first appointed, he 
sent over a vigorous, but not very judicious, man in the 
person of John Evans. 

Logan and other of Penn's best friends rallied around him, 
but Lloyd was in popular control, and for three years (1702- 
1705) as Speaker of the Assembly, he ruled the Province 
with a high hand, finding abundant causes to quarrel with 
the Governor and Council and using them to the best ad- 
vantage. 

The matter culminated in a list of grievances to be sent 
by the House to William Penn in England. This document 
had a remarkable history, and was a source of contention 
for years to come. 

In the first place it was not addressed to Penn directly, 



DAVID LLOYD 95 

but to certain English Friends, who were more or less in- 
imical to him. By a strange series of accidents, the boat 
carrying it was captured by a privateer and taken to France, 
and the bearer made a prisoner. He disclosed his package 
to a brother prisoner, who begged it of him, and, being a 
friend of Penn, forwarded it to the man from whom Lloyd 
meant to keep it till it had done its work secretly among 
the enemies of the Proprietary. 

Equally irregular was the method of its passage through 
the House. It was brought up just at the close of a session 
of the Assembly in August, 1704, when it was too late to 
write it out in full and have it formally passed upon. The 
heads were drawn up and a committee was authorized to 
phrase them properly and forward the product — at least 
so the minutes say; but Logan tells us, and his word is 
supported by Isaac Norris, that the statement was seen by 
three men only, David Lloyd, Griffith Jones and Joseph Wil- 
cox; that the minute giving the matter over to a committee 
was interpolated after the adjournment, and that it was 
signed by David Lloyd as Speaker after his term had ex- 
pired. 

Lloyd defended himself ably in a paper to the Assembly 
in 1709 against these charges. He does not deny that the 
papers were written but intimates that Logan got possession 
of them by unfair means and that the interpolations were 
sanctioned by the committee or as many of them as could 
be procured at the time. 

The heads agreed upon by the Assembly referred to cer- 
tain charges against Penn relating to the failure to perform 
his duty as Proprietary according to his own Charter and 
agreements. He had instructed his Deputy to issue writs 
for election when the House had a right to assemble accord- 
ing to its own adjournment. He had obtained money to 
secure the ratification of laws in England, especially those 



96 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANLA 

giving relief to Friends in the matter of oaths, but had not 
accomplished the purpose. His surveyors of land had been 
inefficient or worse. He had commissioned the Judges and 
they were devoted to his own interests as against those of 
the people. 

The remonstrance was accompanied by a letter from 
David Lloyd which was even more a bitter pill for the 
Proprietary. It told these unfriendly men " how we have 
been abused by trusting William Penn," and emphasized 
the disadvantage to the Province brought upon it by " the 
revels and disorders of young William Penn and his gang 
of loose fellows." 

It is not a matter of wonder that William Penn who was 
never expected to see this epistle did not feel pleasantly 
toward the writer in the succeeding years, and that he was 
quite willing to believe the damaging stories of him in Lo- 
gan's letters. 

But Lloyd had overreached himself. The Assembly 
chosen in the fall of 1705 was of a different sort. There 
was a strong reaction in favor of Penn and Logan. David 
Lloyd was defeated for election in Philadelphia County, 
which he had previously represented, but got in from the 
city. He lost the Speakership, and the Assembly, dropping 
the quarrels of the past, devoted its time to useful legisla- 
tion. 

Now was the time when a good Governor could have kept 
the temper of the people sweet and at the same time resisted 
unjust claims against the Proprietary. But they had any- 
thing but a good Governor. By a series of inexplicable 
follies, he threw away all his advantages. He prosecuted 
an old member of the Assembly, William Biles, for saying 
outside the House, " The Governor is but a boy ; we'll 
kick him out." He attempted to discredit Friends' testi- 
mony against war by raising a false report of the approach 



DAVID LLOYD 97 

of a French fleet and calling on every one to arm, hoping 
that the Friends would thus compromise themselves. In- 
stead of which they went to meeting. He built a fort at 
New Castle, and attempted to extort " powder money " il- 
legally from owners of ships who were mostly of his own 
party. 

In addition, he was irregular in his own life, joined with 
young Penn in his revels, and bore no good name in a com- 
munity of strict Quakers. His own friends had to apolo- 
gize for him, and Logan finally advised the recall, but as a 
result again Lloyd was triumphant. In 1707 and the two 
following years he was elected Speaker, resisted Evans and 
Logan with acrimony and success, and carried the Province 
with him. 

Nor did matters change greatly when Penn in 1709 sent 
over Charles Gookin to supersede Evans. The personal 
faults of Evans were not reproduced in Gookin, but he was 
obstinate and headstrong, and perhaps, as he himself in- 
timated, a little unbalanced mentally. 

There were, however, two underlying causes for the 
trouble. One was that Penn was now in desperate finan- 
cial straits, and could not yield his perquisites except at the 
cost of absolute ruin. His part of the expenses of govern- 
ment had to be borne, the quit-rents were coming in slowly, 
and his steward. Ford, had cheated him out of his fortune. 
The income from fines, licenses and other governmental 
functions were his by the arrangement previously made, 
and he could not afford to yield them. 

The other was that while Deputy Governors changed, 
Logan remained. He could not always control the unwise 
acts of the Deputies, but he could largely influence general 
policy and was absolutely faithful to the Penn interests. 
The matters for which Lloyd contended were in the inter- 
ests of the larger democracy and prosperity of the colony, 



98 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

but Penn could not afford to give up his undoubted rights, 
and Logan would not yield one iota to popular clamor. 
Lloyd was right in looking upon Logan as his great antag- 
onist. Both were determined and fearless, and personal 
feeling was added to political diversity of interests. 

One of the subjects about which the controversy raged 
was the composition of the courts of Justice. The char- 
ter of Charles II to William Penn gave him the right to 
establish courts and appoint their officers. He finally al- 
lowed the Assembly to draw up bills for such establishment, 
but retained the appointment of judges and clerks. As 
Penn's interests were larger than those of any other indi- 
vidual, Lloyd's claim was that these officers should be in- 
dependent of any obligations to him. There appear to 
have been no serious complaints as to the character of these 
officials, or that substantial justice was not done. 

Again, in a community of Friends, it was of vital conse- 
quence that a juror or witness should be accepted on his 
affirmation, for he would not swear. It would be impos- 
sible to secure competent administration of justice without 
Friends, for in all the countrj^ communities they constituted 
nearly all the responsible people. There is no doubt that 
Penn appreciated this, but the charge of Lloyd was that he 
did not succeed in having laws ratified in England making 
provision for the full acceptance of the affirmation as equiv- 
alent to the oath. 

Then there was the burning question of the licensing of 
public houses. Lloyd and the Assembly claimed that this 
was one of the proper functions of the courts and that the 
licensees should be appointed by local authority rather than 
by the Proprietary, so as to secure the choice of proper per- 
sons, who would restrain drunkenness and attendant crimes. 

All these and other matters were to be fought through 
between the Governor and Logan on one side and Lloyd and 
the Assembly on the other. 



DAVID LLOYD 99 

In the fall of 1706 Lloyd had a bill passed through the 
Assembly for a Supreme Court with three judges to which 
appeals could be made, also local courts for the counties for 
ordinary crimes, having also the power to grant licenses for 
taverns — providing that all fines should go toward the 
payment of the judges, who should be removable by the 
Assembly and therefore out of reach of Proprietary in- 
fluence; that the judges should appoint the clerks, and that 
freeholders should not be imprisoned for debt. 

This, of course, would be a great step in advance towards 
popular control of the course of justice. The Governor 
objected to it in toto. There was no need for more than 
one Justice of the Supreme Court — fines and fees belonged 
to the Proprietary, and judges and clerks should not be in- 
dependent of him. It was a Proprietary prerogative which 
the Assembly had no authority to question, granted by the 
charter and due to him in return for his large concessions 
and care of the province. 

The Governor threatened to establish courts on his own 
authority, as the royal charter empowered him to do in 
certain cases, but the Assembly told him that any one who 
should advise this would be considered an enemy of the 
country. 

A conference was arranged between the Council and 
Assembly and a point of etiquette now threatened a com- 
plete stop to legislation. After the matter had been de- 
bated courteously for a time Lloyd neglected to rise when 
he spoke. The Governor commanded him to do so. To 
Lloyd this command was sufficient to arouse his pugnacity 
and he refused to obey, saying that he represented the 
people and in an open conference no special deference to the 
Governor was necessary. This broke up the conference. 
The Assembly sent a semi- apologetic message to the Gov- 
ernor, and Lloyd himself wrote a defense which could 



100 



POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 



hardly be called an apology, ending with these words, char- 
acteristic of the man: " I do solemnly declare that my re- 
fusal to comply with the Governor's humour (for so I con- 
ceive it to be when he exerts his command when he should 
not) was not with a design to affront him but to show my 
dissent to that which I thought had a tendency to frustrate 
the freedom of conferences; not knowing, if I complied with 
this, whether the next command would not more highly 
affect the rights and privileges of this house which I am 
conscientiously concerned to maintain everywhere, and if 
in this I have done any thing unbecoming the station you 
have put me in I shall freely submit to your censure." 

The Governor tried to secure a more personal apology, 
but he never received it, and the incident added to the bit- 
terness of the times. 

Ultimately compromises were reached embracing the 
most for which Lloyd had striven. The Proprietary re- 
tained the right to appoint clerks of the courts and holders 
of licenses, but these could be nominated by provincial 
bodies. Judges independent of the Penn interests were not 
appointed by the Crown according to Lloyd's plan, but men 
of highest character were chosen, and Lloyd himself did 
not disdain to accept a few years later the office of Chief 
Justice from his patrons' hands. 

But Lloyd and Logan in the forefront of the controversy 
recognized, each the other, as the chief obstacle to his plans. 
Penn sent over pressing advice to impeach Lloyd, for ac- 
cepting ofhce illegally under Thomas Lloyd and for his ir- 
regular actions in the case of the remonstrance of 1704. 
Logan said that there were no substantial grounds on which 
to build an impeachment and was too wise to attempt it. 
But Lloyd with the full Assembly back of him entered joy- 
ously upon an impeachment of Logan. The real reason was 
that Logan had the brains and courage of the administra- 



DAVID LLOYD loi 

tion and Lloyd was right in considering him the chief ob- 
stacle in the way. Much time and much legal fencing were 
employed, but the matter came to an end when the Council 
decided that it had no authority to try impeachments and 
the Secretary was saved. He shortly after went to England 
on a visit and returned stronger than ever. 

Governor Gookin next tried a tilt with Lloyd in the mat- 
ter of an appropriation for a military expedition against 
the French in Canada. In a rather facetious letter he him- 
self tells the results: " The Queen having honored me with 
her commands that this Province should furnish out 150 
men for its expedition against Canada, I called an Assembly 
and demanded £4,000; they being all Quakers, after much 
delay resolved, N. C, that it was contrary to their religious 
principles to hire men to kill one another. I told some of 
them the Queen did not hire men to kill one another, but 
to destroy her enemies. One of them answered the 
Assembly understood English. After I had tried all ways 
to bring them to reason they again resolved, N. C, that 
they could not directly or indirectly raise money for an 
expedition to Canada, but they had voted the Queen £500 
as a token of their respect, etc., and that the money should 
be put into a safe hand till they were satisfied from Eng- 
land it should not be employed for the use of war. I told 
them the Queen did not want such a sum, but being a pious 
and good women perhaps she might give it to the clergy 
sent hither for the propagation of the Gospel; one of them 
answered that was worse than the other, on which arose a 
debate in the Assembly whether they should give money or 
not, since it might be employed for the use of war, or against 
their future establishment, and after much wise debate it 
was carried in the affirmative by one voice only. Their 
number is 26.^ They are entirely governed by their 
speaker, one David Lloyd." 

1 Eight from each county and two from Philadelphia. 



102 



POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 



But the people finally got tired of the bickerings of 
parties Lloyd in his contest with Evans and Logan had 
again overstepped the mark. In the fall of 1710 the elec- 
tion showed a completely new Assembly. Neither Lloyd 
nor any of his followers was returned. Instead there canae 
in William Trent, Jonathan Dickinson, Caleb Pusey, Pach- 
ard Hill, Isaac Norris and other of the best friends of Wil- 
liam Penn There was what would be called m modern 
politics " a tidal wave " which showed that, except for 
serious errors by deputies, the heart of the people was true 
to the Founder. Impeachments were dropped, £2,000 was 
voted " for the Queen's use," abundance of useful legisla- 
tion held back by the partisanship of previous years was 
created, and the youthful province having passed over the 
perilous times of infancy, started fairly on its successful 



career. 



Lloyd was temporarily laid aside, and yet his great ser- 
vices in founding the real democracy of Pennsylvama under 
the generous provisions of the Founder had largely been 
accomplished. Whether he felt this or whether about this 
time he experienced a real change of heart, as suggested by 
some biographers, may never be known, but certain it is 
that the peaceful and also effective part of his life and pub- 
lic employment was yet to follow in a score of years of 
honored and honorable service. 

He did not remain long out of office. About 1711 he 
moved his residence from Philadelphia to Chester; in the 
same year he was elected to the Assembly from Chester 
County, but did not receive the Speakership. This also 
happened in 1712 and 1713. In 1714, however, he was 
unanimously chosen Speaker, for which service, in a gen- 
eral way, no one could compete with him in capability. The 
records of the time indicate the great prosperity of the 
Province growing in wealth and population at a rapid rate, 



DAVID LLOYD 103 

and the absence of the unhappy divisions of earlier years. 
A further indication of the softening of the partisan asperi- 
ties of the first decade of the century was the appointment 
of David Lloyd as Chief Justice in 1718 to succeed his 
father-in-law, Joseph Growdon, who had held the position 
for ten years preceding and who had frequently opposed 
him in the House. 

In May, 1717, Sir William Keith succeeded Governor 
Gookin. He was selected by Hannah Penn, for while her 
husband was still alive, he had so far failed in body and 
mind as to be incapable of business and about a year later 
died. 

Keith was a wise and politic Governor. He had the con- 
fidence of Logan and Norris and he now undertook to se- 
cure the support of Lloyd and the Assembly. He rightly 
judged that the Quakers must be kept friendly to him if 
he would be preserved from endless disputes. He found 
them troubled with their difficulties as to oaths, and in a 
diplomatic way suggested that they should adopt the Eng- 
lish penal code and in exchange receive the right to aflBrm 
instead of swearing. The same bill which made an affirm- 
ation legal for those whose consciences would not allow 
them to swear, extended capital punishment to burglary, 
rape, counterfeiting and other serious crimes. The mild 
penal code of Penn wherein murder only was made a capi- 
tal offense and which was applied to one case only prior to 
1700, died with him. There seems to have been no testi- 
mony against capital punishment among Friends. David 
Lloyd, a member in good standing, drew up the bill, it 
was passed by a Quaker Assembly, approved by a Quaker 
Council and endorsed by a Quaker community. Had they 
felt as most modern Friends do, it may be considered as 
doubtful whether the right to affirm would have been 
deemed a sufficient compensation for a severe code involv- 



104 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

ing capital punishment. We can easily appreciate how 
much the affirmation meant to them. For without it they 
would have been deprived of all share in government and 
anarchy would have resulted. But we can hardly appre- 
ciate that a testimony against capital punishment did not 
mean as much. 

Governor Keith's entire attitude was gracious and con- 
ciliatory. He had learned from the experience of former 
Governors how hard a task it was to contest a popular 
Assembly led by David Lloyd and he went over completely 
to the other side, yet at first not so imprudently as to draw 
fire from Logan and his friends. Lloyd was made Chief 
Justice and the Governor assumed the role of protector of 
popular liberties, thus procuring for himself immediate sup- 
port. He had his reward in prompt votes for salary and 

easy times. 

Material prosperity accompanied political peace. There 
was only one drawback, the lack of ready money. Coin 
was drained to Europe to make the purchases needed by a 
growing community which imported far more than it ex- 
ported. Barter was common, but was inconvenient. Keith 
shrewdly suggested a paper currency. Norris and Logan 
objected and their fears were echoed from England. There 
seemed to be abundant ground for hesitation. Many of the 
Colonies had tried it, and with disastrous results. As a 
little stimulated trade, more, they argued, would be better; 
and they increased the amount until it lost its purchasing 
power and depreciated. But Lloyd and his friends urged 
it and Keith had his way. 

This balance of forces was just what was needed to make 
it a success. It was issued sparingly on the security of 
land and plate. It stimulated trade and never depreciated. 
Pennsylvania taught the lesson, and all through her colo- 
nial history she had an abundant stable paper currency, due 



DAVID LLOYD 105 

largely to the initiative of Keith and Lloyd and the caution 
of Logan. But the latter element did not win the popular 
appreciation as did the former, and Keith became im- 
mensely popular. The Assembly sent him a congratulatory 
letter and a vote of supplies. The Council, which had been 
largely ignored by the Governor, as indeed by the charter 
of 1701 he had a right to ignore it, as having no necessary 
function in legislation, drew away from him, and in 1722 
Keith, feeling himself strong enough to dispense with it, 
removed Logan from his oflBees as Councillor and Secretary, 
thus forcing him out of the government entirely. 

But Logan was still strong with Hannah Penn, and sail- 
ing to England he soon returned with definite instructions 
to Keith, threatening him with removal. Keith was consti- 
tutionally right, but he was the servant of the heirs of Wil- 
liam Penn, and they trusted Logan. He concluded to stand 
by his plans, and to set against proprietary powers, popu- 
lar support. Logan attacked him in a long memorial, and 
David, with some of the spirit and vigor of a score of years 
earlier, entered the lists against his old adversary. His 
abundant citation of authorities and able legal arguments 
were conclusive, if such matters could settle the question. 
He was again Speaker of the Assembly as well as Chief 
Justice, and that body under his guidance sent to Hannah 
Penn a remonstrance against the contemplated removal of 
the Governor and a eulogy of his services to the state. 

From the Lloyd point of view the administration of Keith 
was the consummation of the efforts for which he had been 
struggling for many years. The Assembly, as the repre- 
sentatives of the people, had been exalted and their rights 
defined and extended. The Courts had been created by the 
act of Assembly, made reasonably responsive to popular 
demands and the great democratic leader placed at the head 
of the system. The Quakers had received that for which 



io6 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Lloyd had always pleaded — the right to a full participa- 
tion in government without being sworn. English wars 
had ceased to disturb the peaceable principles of the ruling 
sect, and to crown all a stable material prosperity, satisfy- 
ing alike to proprietaries and people, had settled down upon 
the province. It is not to be wondered at that Lloyd in his 
old age awakened from his quietude to defend the cause 
with which he had been so long and so intimately associated 
in his earlier years. 

With such a record and such support Keith thought he 
could defy England. He felt that the heirs would hardly 
dare to remove him, and if they did he imagined he might 
even overthrow the proprietary government itself and make 
a crown colony, with himself as Governor. 

But with all that he had learned he under-estimated the 
strength of the sentiment of the people of Pennsylvania to 
the Founder's family, and when the day of his removal came 
he had nothing to do but hand over his office to old Patrick 
Gordon, who, in 1726, had been sent over to supersede him. 

Lloyd also accepted the failure of his plans gracefully. 
Indeed, he and the Assembly may almost be accused of 
apostasy by allowing their enthusiasm for Keith to pass 
away. When the ex-Governor had himself elected to the 
next Assembly and became a candidate for Speaker, Lloyd 
turned against him and easily defeated him. His further 
career was neither happy nor dignified, and the unwisdom 
of his closing years was allowed to cloud his great services 
to the cause of free government. 

This w-as the last important public controversy of David 
Lloyd. In honored performance of his duties as Chief 
Justice he lived until 173L He died aged 75 years. 

After this sketch of David Lloyd's life it is unnecessary 
to say much as to his character. He was a great lawyer, 
probably the greatest of colonial Pennsylvania. In this 



DAVID LLOYD 107 

capacity he was always efficient and faithful to his clients, 
sometimes possibly at the expense of pure morality. In 
most legal circles this would hardly seem a fault, but the 
Quakers of the time from their lay standpoint could not 
always justify him. 

As a politician he was equally competent. He led by 
sheer ability and persistence. Logan tells us — and this 
was at the time before their personal differences had de- 
veloped: *' He is a man very stiff in all his undertakings, of 
a sound judgment and a good lawyer, but extremely per- 
tinacious and somewhat revengeful." Proud says cau- 
tiously: ''His political talents seem rather to divide than 
to unite; a policy that may suit the crafty politician but 
must ever be disclaimed by the Christian statesman." 

It is unfair to assume that Logan's further estimates of 
his character, given in the heat of their partisan controversy, 
are conclusive. He tells, however, how it was that Lloyd 
maintained his great influence in the Assembly, and we may 
at least guess the truth from his statements. " The generality 
(of the Assemblymen) are honest and well inclined and out 
of the Assembly are very good men, but when got together 
I know not how they are infatuated and led by smooth 
stories," and again he speaks of the great influence " he has 
over the majority composed of designing and weak men," 
and again " He carries so fair with our weak country people 
and those that have long looked upon him to be the cham- 
pion of the Friends' cause in government matters in former 
times that there is no possessing them." And again, " Jones 
and Wilcox stand by him in mischievous intentions. The 
rest think they are faithfully discharging their duty to the 
country." 

Lloyd was the great leader of the country members, and 
these were a large majority of the Assembly. They were 
worthy, honest men, but Lloyd was so vastly their superior 



io8 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

in learning, ability and political skill that he practically 
voted them as he would. Whenever the Logan party got 
control a much abler and more responsible body of men 
appeared in the Assembly, only to be thrown aside when 
Lloyd returned to power. 

David Lloyd became for the times wealthy, but no sus- 
picion of mercenary methods appears in his politics. He 
probably made his money by his legal practice and still 
more by advances on real estate. His salary as Chief 
Justice was generally £150 a year, and the Assembly paid 
him for his labors in framing legislation and writing ad- 
dresses, but his public work would not explain more than 
a poor living. k 

As a Friend we do not find him prominently mentioned in 
the minutes of the meetings — at least in comparison with 
the records of Samuel Carpenter, Isaac Norris and many 
another. Perhaps there was, as the minutes of Philadelphia 
Monthly Meeting in the case of the dispute with Pastorius 
show, a lurking suspicion that his methods could not be 
fully justified. 

It is a significant fact, however, that Chester Monthly 
Meeting was the most persistent of any in urging upon the 
Yearly Meeting the iniquity of the slave trade and the ne- 
cessity to take strong action.^ The first one of these epistles 
was in 1711, which was the year Lloyd moved from Phila- 
delphia to Chester, and the last was in 1730, the year before 
he died, and their style suggests the bold, vigorous, uncom- 
promising spirit that penned the Assembly addresses of the 
same period. This is not conclusive, but it seems highly 
probable that the attitude of the early Friends of Pennsyl- 
vania towards questions of slavery was largely due to the 
clear thinking and fearless writing of David Lloyd. 

David Lloyd's second wife was Grace Growdon, the 

1 See Whittier's Introduction to "John Woolman's Journal." 



DAVID LLOYD 109 

daughter of Joseph Growdon, of Bucks County, one of the 
leading men of the colony and in the main an adherent of 
the Penn-Logan party. Why the father cut off Grace with 
five shillings in his will is probably not known, but he fre- 
quently opposed his son-in-law in politics. They were 
married in 1697. Their only son died when four years old, 
as the result, it is stated, of fright because he was placed in 
a dark closet for punishment during the absence of his par- 
ents. David Lloyd had no descendants to care for his rep- 
utation, and except in the public records, and a defense in 
the Penn-Logan correspondence, he left but little about 
himself. 

He had landed interests in Chester and represented Ches- 
ter County in the Assembly until 1700. Then he trans- 
ferred his residence to Philadelphia, and that county made 
him its representative for the coming decade. Afterwards 
he moved to Chester for his declining years. 

Grace Lloyd was a minister in the Society of Friends and 
was much loved and trusted. There is an account in the 
life of Jane Hoskins ^ which gives a little insight into the 
family and religious life of David and Grace Lloyd. 

Jane Fenn (afterwards Hoskins) came over to Penn- 
sylvania in 1712, in response to a call of duty. She was of 
poor circumstances, and engaged herself as a servant in 
Friends' families, at the same time diligently attending reli- 
gious meetings. She tells her own story: " One First-day 
after I had sat some time in Haverford Meeting, David 
Lloyd from Chester, with his wife and several other Friends 
came into meeting. As soon as they were seated, it was 
as though it had been spoken to me, * These are the people 
with whom thou must go and settle.' They being strangers 
to mc, and appearing as persons of distinction, I said, 
Lord, how can such an one as I get acquainted with people 
1 Friends' Library, Vol. I, p. 4G0, etc. 



no POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

who appear so much above the common rank. The word 
was in my soul, ' Be still, I will make way for thee m their 
hearts — they shall seek to thee.' I knew not what to thmk 
of this, and was afraid it might be a temptation of Satan; 
yet was contented in the thought, that the Lord who never 
yet failed, was all-sufficient to provide for me. At that 
instant a great stillness came over me, and I felt the love 
of my heavenly Father to affect me in a very uncommon 
manner I afterwards understood that David Lloyd and 
his wife fixed their eyes upon me, felt a near sympathy 
with me, such as they had never known towards a stranger 
before, and said in their hearts, this young woman is or will 
be a preacher. They were both tendered, and it was fixed 
in their minds, that they were to take me under their care, 
and nurse me for the Lord's service, with a promise that his 
blessing should attend them. This I had from their own 
mouths after I lived with them." . , ^ ., . 

Jane Fenn became " an upper servant " in the family of 
David Lloyd. This came in response to a suggestion of an 
English Friend who had become interested in her religious 
life " After dinner," she says, '' the Friend spoke to David 
Lloyd and his wife. ' Take this young woman, make her 
your adopted child and give her liberty to go wherever 
Truth leads ' . . . Grace Lloyd then took me into another 
apartment and told me how she and her husband were 
drawn in love to me the first time they saw me at Haver- 

fnrrl " 

Jane Fenn became a minister and made extensive travels 
through other colonies, to Barbadoes and later to Ireland 
and England in religious service. She returned from a for- 
eign trip in 1730 " and was affectionately received by my 
kind friends and benefactors, David and Grace Lloyd. 

" Soon after my arrival David Lloyd was taken ill with 
his last sickness, during which I thought it my duty to at- 



DAVID LLOYD in 

tend on him as usual. On the 6th of the second month, 
1731, he departed this life; and in him I lost a father, and 
a sure friend. In all the journeys I went, whilst he lived, 
he cheerfully supplied me with the necessaries requisite. 
He was exemplary in his family, treating all about him with 
humanity, choosing rather to be loved than feared. He was 
diligent in attending meetings for worship, and those of 
his servants who inclined to go to meetings, he allowed to 
perform that necessary duty. After my arrival I did not 
live as an hired servant with David Lloyd, or with his 
widow, though I remained with her, at her request, till I 
married, which was in the year 1738." 

The value of David Lloyd's services to the state will lie, 
(1) in his successful insistence upon an independent legis- 
lature. He had evidently a large though undetermined 
share in procuring from Penn the charter of 1701, which cut 
the Council out of all legislative powers. He was ever keen 
to notice any small attempts to reinstate it in such powers 
in indirect ways. He had the modern faith in the people 
and was jealous of any tendency which would circumscribe 
the privilege of the elective Assembly. (2) He, more than 
any other man, fought out the Quaker battle for the affirm- 
ation instead of the oath, and for the further contest for 
a form of affirmation which was simply a promise, with- 
out bringing in the name of God, which in some minds made 
it a modified oath; and (3) while Penn arranged for an 
executive and a legislature, he omitted to make provision 
for a judiciary, probably intending to create this by his 
own authority under his charter from the King. The form 
which the machinery of the courts finally assumed and its 
large independence of proprietary influence, was the great 
work of David Lloyd. 

In the words of Proud, it is true that Lloyd's efforts 
" tended rather to divide than to unite." He could not 



112 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

work comfortably with opponents and bring them to his 
own point of view. By his staunch Quakerism and superior 
knowledge he brought his followers into loyal allegiance, 
but he was uncompromising in his attitude towards opposi- 
tion. Whether the beneficent results of his career could 
have been achieved by a gentler spirit, less tenacious of 
every little point, arousing less personal antagonism, more 
gracious and diplomatic in argument, may be difficult to 
determine with certainty. It is not unreasonable so to 

think. 

But it is difficult to estimate the full value of his ser- 
vices. His strong personality, his persistent energy, his ex- 
treme perception of the value of liberty and determination 
to defend it against any, even small, encroachments, made 
him a strong factor, perhaps after William Penn the strong- 
est factor, in building up the colonial Commonwealth on the 
basis of popular rights. Had he known how the letters of 
his great rival to Penn would have formed the basis of his- 
tory, he might have left stronger defences of his work and 
positions. There is not much evidence, however, that he 
considered the judgment of the future as of consequence. 
He was too busy attaining immediate objects. It is only 
in quite recent times that his name and reputation have 
emerged from the mass of statements against him contained 
in the voluminous letters of political opponents and their 
descendants. Without family, with a following, numerous 
and devoted but not literary, with an independence which 
kept him in somewhat doubtful relations to many of the 
prominent Friends of the Yearly Meeting, without ade- 
quate biography, he has hardly received the attention which 
his undoubtedly great public services demand. 

His countrymen appreciated him. The Rev. Abel Mor- 
gan wrote a Welsh Concordance to the Bible, which was 
published in 1730 and dedicated to Chief Justice Lloyd as 



DAVID LLOYD 113 

a token of esteem and an appreciation of his devotion to 
the principles of liberty. He aided in the revision of the 
translation of a religious treatise called '* A Salutation to 
the Britains." During his later years he published two 
small treatises: " A Vindication of the Legislative Powers," 
and " A Further Vindication of the Rights and Privileges of 
the People of Pennsylvania." 

These were the occupations of his declining years of 
peaceful repose in contrast with the stirring scenes of his 
earlier life. They indicate, however, that the trend of his 
thoughts never changed. 



JAMES LOGAN 

It is usually stated that James Logan was a descendant 
of a noble Logan family of Scotland. This has probably 
not been certainly proven. It is sufficient for our purpose 
to state that his father was Patrick Logan, a Presbyterian 
minister who joined Friends and moved to the north of Ire- 
land where James was born. He thus inherited his Quaker- 
ism. There are however various events in his life which 
show that he also inherited that vigorous militant blood of 
the people commonly called Scotch-Irish, who so much 
disturbed the Quaker relations with the Indians on the 
frontiers of Pennsylvania, who largely settled the western 
end of the province and spread themselves down the Appa- 
lachian country to the south, who were the choicest enemies 
of Quakerism whenever they came into conflict, and through 
whose influence Pennsylvania was largely drawn into the 
Revolutionary War. 

He did not much like the company of his compatriots 
that came later in provincial times. They were the great 
obstacles in the way of his Indian policy which he had 
inherited from William Penn and which he faithfully ad- 
hered to, and he did not fancy their rough uncouth man- 
ners. "It is strange that they thus crowd in where they 
are not wanted. . . . The Indians themselves are alarmed 
at the swarms of strangers and we are afraid of a breach 
between them, for the Irish are very rough to them," he 
says, — a prophecy soon verified. 

He was born on October 20th, 1674, at Lurgan. His 
father was a teacher and gave him a good education. He 

114 . 



JAMES LOGAN 115 

became proficient in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. The Irish 
fighting which was terminated by the Battle of the Boyne 
sent the family first to Scotland and then to Bristol, Eng- 
land, where he carried on his studies in mathematics and 
modern languages and assisted his father in teaching. In 
1699 William Penn, who had many acquaintances in Bristol 
where his second wife had lived, came into contact with 
James Logan and asked him to go with him as secretary of 
his province. They reached Philadelphia early in Decem- 
ber. Logan was then 25 years old, one of the few highly 
educated men of the settlement. 

Thus began his colonial life. As secretary and agent of 
the Penn family, trustee under Penn's will, secretary of the 
Council, Mayor of Philadelphia, Chief Justice of the Prov- 
ince, and for a time acting Lieutenant-Governor, he was for 
fifty years a most potential influence, perhaps the most po- 
tential influence for this half century, in provincial affairs. 
It is often said and with a large element of truth that Penn 
was weak in his judgment of men. But he made no mis- 
take in this instance. Save for a certain pugnacity which 
was sometimes tactless and made him enemies, there never 
was a more faithful and intelligent manager of another 
man's affairs ; and this refers equally to Penn's political and 
his financial interests. 

He came into his Quaker membership by birthright rather 
than by conviction and while in the main loyal to the So- 
ciety, refused to accept in full all its usual testimonies. On 
his first voyage from England his boat was approached by 
a supposed pirate which afterwards proved to be a friend. 
Penn and the Friends held a meeting in the cabin. Logan 
assisted the sailors on deck to prepare the guns for de- 
fense. After the danger was over Penn reproved him for 
his martial activity. It seems to have been a surprise to 
him that Friends disapproved of physical weapons for 



ii6 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

defense, and he did not see how his master could govern a 
province on this basis. That he had not known it is an 
indication of rather a lax acquaintance with the history of 
the Society. 

Shortly after he came to Philadelphia he found that Dan- 
iel Cooper from New Jersey had settled upon the Reed 
Islands in the Delaware River which belonged to Penn. 
Logan with Edward Shippen, Jr., and the Sheriff of Phila- 
delphia went out armed to arrest him. No blood was shed 
but the meeting thought it necessary to set the matter 
straight and " clear the Truth." The two Friends were re- 
quired to write papers of apology and after one or two trials 
produced such as were satisfactory to the meeting. The 
charge against Logan was " his going with armed men or 
suffering arms to go in company with him in a hostile man- 
ner when he ought to have gone in a peaceable manner 
according to the profession he makes." Logan's acknowl- 
edgment is interesting: — 

" Whereas upon a provocation given by Daniel Cooper 
of West Jersey, injuriously (as was judged) to our Pro- 
prietary's right and contrary to authority, invading in the 
5th mo. last one of the Reed islands of Delaware, over 
against this city, I undertook to go over to ye said island to 
divert him from proceeding in his design, accompanied with 
the Sheriff of Philada. who hearing of an opposition de- 
signed, took with him some other persons with fire arms for 
ye greater awe of such as should attempt to oppose. And 
whereas occasion hath been or may be taken from the said 
arms being earned in my company to reflect not only upon 
me as concerned for the Proprietary, but also upon the 
profession of Gods Truth owned by and amongst us, I do 
therefore in a true sense of the inconveniences that have 
naturallv ensued from the said action and its contrariety 
to the said profession heartily regret my complying with or 
being in anywise concerned in that method which ministers 
such occasion and do in sincerity declare that could I have 
foreseen the ill consequences of it I should by no means 
have engaged in it. 



JAMES LOGAN 117 

" Hoping and earnestly desiring that it may please God, 
the Author of all good councill and direction so to enlighten 
my understanding by his spirit that I may avoid not only 
all such occasions but all others that by being contrary to 
his divine will may minister offence for the future, 

James Logan." 

Hardly had this matter been settled when he had some 
difficulty with Thomas Story a young and accomplished 
Quaker minister. Thomas Story made some unknown 
charge against James Logan " both upon his own and 
Truths account " and they mutually agreed to leave it to 
the determination of the meeting, giving up all papers in 
their possession. The matter was somehow amicably 
settled and the meeting decreed that all these papers should 
be burned in the presence of the two men, each declaring 
that no others existed. This was done and no one will ever 
know the cause of the difficulty from the meeting records. 

Profane history however tells us that these two young 
men were suitors for the hand of Anne Shippen, the daughter 
of the mayor of Philadelphia, and that Story won the prize. 
That Logan's rivalry caused some actions of which the 
meeting disapproved is not an impossible suggestion. The 
disappointment seems to have been generally known and to 
have reached Penn's ears in England. " I am anxiously 
grieved for thy unhappy love," he writes, " for thy sake 
and my own, for T. S. and thy discord has been of no serv- 
ice here any more than there." But the affair was settled. 
The two became excellent friends. " He and I are great 
friends," Logan said a couple of years later, " for I think 
the whole business is not now worth a quarrel." In later 
years a long correspondence of considerable interest, which 
has been published, was kept up between the two scholars 
relating to scientific and philosophical matters. 

From Isaac Norris's description one ought to find it diffi- 



ii8 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA i 

cult to quarrel with Thomas Story. " He was bred a law- 
yer but laid that aside for the gospel. His conversation as 
a man was sweet, gentle, and extremely affable; his spirit 
as a Christian extraordinarily humble; and I have observed 
him to watch even against his own abilities lest they should 
appear to exalt him in the opinion of any." 

Other cases where James Logan differed from the Quaker 
authorities will be mentioned later. But the relations were 
always sympathetic. He was careful to emphasize his 
membership whenever proper, his family was perhaps more 
Friendly than he, and his integrity and high ideals were 
never questioned, except by his political opponents m the 
heat of controversy. He however never took prominent 
part in church affairs, held few official positions, and there 
seems to have been a frank recognition of certain differ- 
ences to which in time both sides adjusted themselves. 

" Traveling Friends," he writes to Penn, " will give no 
good account of my strictness. I am willing all should 
know that I neither am nor ever was a strict professor and 
I will make my outside appearance agree with what I really 
know myself to be." 

When Penn left him in 1701 Logan plunged into the work 
with his characteristic ardor and energy. The quit-rents 
had to be collected and this was no light matter from a 
people, comfortably living it is true, but with but little ready 
money. Individually small (one shilling per hundred 
acres or thereabouts) it made a great difference to William 
Penn that they should come in promptly for he was greatly 
out of funds through his experiment. The rough surveys 
had to be revised and when settlers found that they had 
more or less land than they supposed, adjustments had to 
be made. Penn had been rather profuse and uneven m his 
promises, titles were uncertain, and records in default. The 
tangle must be straightened out. Logan had a clear head 



JAMES LOGAN 119 

and absolute fidelity, but his manners were ungracious and 
his instructions, which he could not well disclose, frequently 
hampered his free action. His was not a popular part but 
he did his duty. Penn's best friends stood by him but the 
country people were not pleased by his stringent demands 
and his unsympathetic attitude, however in their hearts 
they might recognize the general justice of his measures. 
Thus he alienated support and his future battles with David 
Lloyd were made more difficult, while his differences with 
his monthly meeting did not help matters. 

Why it was difficult to collect the quit-rents and other 
dues manifestly owing to Penn is told by James Logan. "No 
trade," he writes, " no money coming in, nothing to pay in 
but wheat and no sale for that." And again, " Were the 
country people ever so willing nay were it to redeem their 
lives they cannot now raise money." Under these circum- 
stances the only remedy was distraint. The difficulties of 
collection were so great and the feeling for the farmers so 
strong that men could not be found, to apply the law. 

He writes again, " The people will not pay without dis- 
tress (distraint) . Friends are willing to pay but not to bear 
all the burden themselves, while others obstinately save 
their money, and none can be prevailed upon without much 
reluctancy and compulsion to do that unkind office to their 
neighbors." Later the meetings set their machinery to 
work and insisted that the members should pay their just 
dues. But the difficulty, until paper money was issued 
some 40 years after the founding, consisted in the fact that 
the province was drained of money to pay for importations 
which the developing country must have. Logan writes 
again in 1705: "We have now tis true nor money nor 
credit, yet we live quiet and easy and want nothing," and 
Penn responds " I am glad of thy opinion of the people that 
it arises from want and not disaffection that they have not 
paid." 



120 



POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 



The ownership of William Penn and heirs was of three 
sorts. (1) The common land sold at uniform prices, at the 
start about £5 per 100 acres, to all satisfactory purchasers, 
who were also to pay a quit-rent^ of one shilling per 100 
acres per year. (2) The manors belonging to the proprietors 
jointly, usually the best 10,000 contiguous acres out of every 
100,000 acres sold. (3) Land owned by individual proprie- 
tors bought as any one else would. There was a condition 
that the first purchasers of 5000 acres, for which the price 
was fixed at £100, should have a town lot of liberal dimen- 
sions within the limits of the city of Philadelphia or its 
" liberties," and this provision was extended pro rata to 
certain small purchasers. Land could be rented at a quit- 
rent of one penny per acre. Masters might have 50 acres 
for each servant brought over and servants themselves also 
50 acres each when the time of service was ended. 

With this complicated system and the crude opportuni- 
ties for keeping records it may be seen that the land oSice 
was for 50 years a scene of confusion and strife. 

There were also difficulties in carrying out Penn's policy 
with the Indians. He had given instructions that strict 
honesty was to be used in buying lands of them and that 
purchase should precede settlement. But settlers pushed 
themselves into unoccupied lands without recognition either 
of Proprietor or Indian rights. In 1726 it was estimated 
that there were many thousand settlers, mostly Germans 
and Scotch-Irish, on land to which they had no legal right. 
This was a source of continuous trouble with the Indians 
which nothing but a general respect for " Onas " enabled 
Logan to keep in check. 

1 This name originated because the renter was thereby "quit and 
free" from all other feudal services. According to English law 
something of the sort seemed necessary to the perfection of the 
title. 



JAMES LOGAN 121 

In 1682, before Penn landed, his agent and cousin, Wil- 
liam Markham, had bought of the Indians the land between 
the Neshaminy Creek and the Delaware River. Within a 
few years by several purchases, from various Indian chiefs, 
several of them covering the same districts, titles to all of 
south-eastern Pennsylvania, as far back into the country 
as a man could travel with a horse in a two days journey, 
were secured. In 1694 Penn bought of the Five Nations 
the whole course of the Susquehanna through the province 
and confirmed it later by buying again of other tribes who 
objected to the claims of the Five Nations. So the various 
Indian titles, some very shadowy, were bought out. At- 
tempts were made to dispossess settlers who passed over 
the legal boundaries. They were removed and their build- 
ings burned. But they went in again as soon as the force 
withdrew. 

Some of these troubles were at the time which we are con- 
sidering still in the foreground but James Logan was enter- 
ing on a task which was of immense service to the young 
province. His boundless hospitality to Indian chiefs, his 
sympathy for the Penn policy and ability in making it 
effective saved many a day of serious discord. For 50 
years he conducted the most of the transactions with the 
red men with great success. 

But if the land and Indian questions were troublesome for 
the young secretary, the political issue was even more im- 
portunate. The Deputy Governor selected by Penn did 
not live long and a young man of Logan's age, John Evans, 
was in 1704 selected as his successor. This proved a most 
unfortunate choice for all parties. He was not wise in his 
methods, had no sympathy with Friends and his life did not 
commend him to their favorable notice. With him came 
the oldest son of the proprietor by his first wife, William 
Penn, Jr. He had been something of a libertine but his 



122 



POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 



father hoped that the influence of Logan aided by solid 
Friends like Samuel Carpenter and Isaac Norris would save 
him. Logan did his best, and for a time the experiment 
seemed likely to succeed. He was encouraged to find his 
pleasure in the woods and waters, teeming with game and 
fish, and to become interested in the political problems of 
the province of which he would probably be the proprietor. 
But Evans' influence was not good and after a drunken not 
in the streets, the two were arrested at night for disorderly 
conduct. The legal question was soon patched up but the 
matter caused great heart-burnings both in England and 
Pennsylvania and was not without its political significance. 
The young heir shook the dust both of the province and 
the church off his feet and neither knew him again. 

Had Governor Evans behaved himself Logan would 
have had but little trouble in maintaining the interests of 
the Proprietor. But there followed a series of unwise and 
provoking actions which quite unsettled the influence of the 
Secretary. David Lloyd was busily engaged in pressing 
the claims of the legislature to adjourn at its will and to 
be independent of executive control. He did this by vir- 
tue of his superior finesse and knowledge and by his staunch 
support of the Friendly position against war and oaths. 
Logan was quite his equal in ability but was known not to 
be so radical in his moral positions. Besides as the faithful 
guardian of the Penn interests he thought it necessary to 
support the governor. 

The Remonstrance of 1704 ^ brought the smouldermg 
controversy to a head and was the center about which the 
storm raged for a number of years. Neither leader hes- 
itated to say hard words of the other. '' That lurking snake, 
David Lloyd" is the eulogy sent to England by Logan. 
" The malignity and falsehood of James Logan " is Lloyd's 
1 See David Lloyd, p. 94. 



JAMES LOGAN 123 

reference to his adversary. If the body of Friends of the 
time possessed the spirit of these leaders it would have to 
be admitted that the softening influence of their religion 
was not much in evidence. But while dealing with matters 
of consequence it was largely a politicians' fight. The body 
of Friends seemed to be interested spectators ready to turn 
the scale in favor of one side or the other as errors of 
" falsehood or malignity " withdrew their sympathy. Back 
of it was an undeniable love and respect for the absent Pro- 
prietor now in the depth of his financial difiiculties, and, 
less to be commended, but only natural, a hope to improve 
their material conditions. Whether they very intelligently 
cared for the political and civil liberties which Lloyd so 
strenuously urged is more doubtful. If so it was largely due 
to his persistent advocacy, which, whatever the motive, 
made the province " safe for democracy." 

Logan and his friends triumphed in the election of 1705 
when a w^ave of loyalty for Penn swept the province. This 
unfortunately had the effect of increasing the presumption 
of the Governor. An elderly and injudicious Assemblyman, 
William Biles, sympathetic with the popular party, had 
made some indefinite threat outside the house that Evans 
was but a boy and " we will kick him out." For this the 
Governor had him arrested and put in prison and asked the 
house to expel him, which of course it refused to do, and 
asserted that its privileges had been violated by his 
arrest. However this did not seriously abate the strength 
of the Logan party which again carried the election of 1706, 
electing Joseph Growdon as Speaker and passing much 
wholesome legislation without bickering. 

Again Evans was his own worst enemy. Truly appre- 
hensive that an attack by sea from the French fleet was 
imminent he attempted to induce the Assembly to appropri- 
ate money to place the province in a state of defense. But 



124 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

the Assembly, practically all Friends, would do nothing. 
He thought that their principles would fade away before a 
near danger and adopted a ruse to discredit them. On the 
day of the annual fair when the city was unusually full of 
people he had an accomplice send word from New Castle 
that the enemy's ships were in the river. Then mounting 
his horse with a drawn sword he rode through the streets 
asking the people to arm. The city was duly alarmed. 
There was a great exodus of small craft to the creeks, plate 
was buried, and some families hid themselves. The Friends 
instead of arming as Evans had intended went to their reg- 
ular midweek meeting and sat in quiet through the disturb- 
ance. They had not compromised themselves and when 
later in the day the real facts developed the Governor was 
placed in an unexcusable situation much shorn of influence. 
The next Assembly as the result of this farce went over 
to the opposition and Lloyd was again in power. James 
Logan was charged with being an accomplice in the plot by 
placing a French flag on a sloop which would have told the 
truth about the matter and sending signals to the Governor. 
This he denies in a letter to Penn and his general good 
sense and knowledge of Friends would seem to support the 
denial. His object he says in going down the river was to 
ascertain the truth, and abate the panic. He writes Penn 
" The entire body (of Friends) seems disgusted and piqued 
to the heart at the contrivances of that alarm which they 
think served only to expose them to their enemies here." 
Then Evans tried another plan equally unfortunate for 
his popularity and this time directed mainly against his own 
adherents. He built a fort at New Castle and levied trib- 
ute in the shape of powder on all vessels entering or leaving 
Philadelphia. The restriction on trade was probably illegal 
and certainly unpopular, and Richard Hill, an old sea cap- 
tain and now a prominent citizen, with two other Quaker 



JAMES LOGAN 125 

merchants, undertook to sail his own vessel past the fort 
and test the right of the Governor to collect the tax. They 
stopped at the fort, informing the commander that their 
vessel was regularly cleared, and demanding that they 
should be allowed to pass. This was denied and Richard 
Hill himself took the helm and sailed by the fort, receiving 
a shot through the mainsail. The commander followed in 
an armed boat as did also Evans himself in another. The 
boat of the former was turned adrift and he himself kept a 
prisoner in the cabin. Landing at Salem they found Lord 
Cornbury, the Governor of New Jersey, to whom the exac- 
tion was equally distasteful. The prisoner was reprimanded 
and released and this ended the " powder money " exaction 
on the Delaware. 

But Evans was hopelessly discredited in the minds of the 
Pennsylvanians, and Logan, who had stood by him as far as 
he could, as the representative of the Penn interests, shared 
his unpopularity. The Assemblies of 1707-8-9 were bitterly 
opposed to the Executive and to James Logan as its brains 
and motive power. 

That official now came into the clutch of impeachment 
proceedings. The Assembly was greatly incensed at the 
Governor and with some truth identified Logan with his 
actions. The secretary had also become generally unpopu- 
lar by his rigidity in collecting quit-rents and other of the 
dues of Penn. Moreover he could possibly be reached by 
legal proceedings while Evans could not. So they pre- 
sented thirteen articles of impeachment against him relat- 
ing to alleged misdeeds. They stated that he had illegally 
violated the constitution of 1701 by inserting in the Gov- 
ernor's commission a power to convene or dissolve the 
Assembly; that he had usurped certain powers in relation 
to surveying lands and reserving quit-rents; that he had 
prevented certain acts of assembly from being published 



126 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

and that he had persuaded oflBcials to accept their commis- 
sions from the Governor instead of by election of the people. 

It is not improbable that Logan was technically guilty 
of some of these charges. He had in defense of the rights of 
the Proprietor and with an exalted sense of his own im- 
portance combined with a dislike amounting at times al- 
most to contempt for Lloyd and the popular party, assumed 
powers which were legally indefensible. 

The Governor stood by him and refused to entertain the 
charges on the ground that neither he nor the Council had 
power to try impeachments. Logan himself while pro- 
fessing a desire to have the case tried was unwilling to pro- 
ceed until the proofs were published. There was much legal 
fencing on both sides which embittered the controversy, and 
the Assembly finally concluded to appeal directly to Wil- 
liam Penn of England with their complaints against his 
own neglect of their interests. 

This remonstrance was more moderate than that of 1704 
but reiterated the old charges. The Friends had not been 
relieved in the matter of oaths and hence were deprived of 
certain official positions; the Maryland boundary had not 
been settled; the royal sanction had not been secured for 
certain laws ; the Deputy-Governor had attempted to estab- 
lish a judiciary on his own authority; had refused to try 
Logan; had formed a militia, exacted '* powder money," had 
been engaged in disorderly brawls in the city and in immor- 
alities in Indian villages. The charges against Logan were 
repeated. 

The people endorsed the Assembly electing practically the 
same members for 1709 and the impeachment proceedings 
were not allowed to drop. It is probably true that the 
Assembly was now composed of a weak set of men. The 
nerve was taken from Penn's friends by the exploits of Ev- 
ans and they withdrew from the contest. This left the field 



JAMES LOGAN 127 

to Lloyd's followers and he wanted such as he could manage. 
Logan, it is quite likely, made the most of their weaknesses 
when he wrote " In the worst of our former Assemblies we 
had seven or eight honest men of good sense. ... In the 
present we have not one left," and again " The last Assem- 
bly were all Friends in unity except [two]. But these pres- 
ent Gallimaco Fry (such a mixture as were never here in the 
assembly before) are the men it seems that are to manage 
in the name and for the interest of Friends when in reality 
they are neither of them or the church, but the leaders of 
them are made up of that bitter spirit raised by the foam 
scattered by George Keith at the time of the Separation." 
The Keith body had disintegrated by this time, but there 
are several evidences that the personal bitterness in many 
cases had not passed away. At any rate the Assembly fol- 
lowed Lloyd most loyally in his moves against the propri- 
etor and his secretary. 

The best friends of the province were in despair. In this 
vein Isaac Norris who was now in England writes to James 
Logan: '' Serious and sorrowful reflections upon the present 
state of poor Pa. have presented themselves and they give 
a melancholy and discouraging prospect. The ingratitude 
of the Lieut. Gov. to his friends that had staged themselves 
to serve him, the disposition and thwarting designs of 
others, the heightening of parties, the decay of trade, the 
discredit the country has here, the proprietor's hard circum- 
stances with Ford and his other involvings, his placing all 
upon that country, and expectation of more from it than it 
is able or willing to do with other contingencies and the 
confusions in view make me almost wish I had no obliga- 
tions there." 

Added to this there was a most urgent insistence on the 
part of the non-Friends on some adequate means of defense. 
A French privateer landed some sixty men at Hoarkill 



128 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

(Lewes) and plundered it, carrying some citizens away for 
ransom. It was possible that the same might happen at 
Philadelphia and there was a clamorous demand as Logan 
writes against " the absurdity of pretending to govern 
without applying force in the greater as well as the least 
degree," that is in general armed defense as well as against 
a robber. But nothing was done and the province was not 
disturbed by privateers. Serious remonstrances were how- 
ever sent to England that the Quakers were unfit to manage 
a government. The trouble became intense and Isaac 
Norris wonders " whether it were the worse prospect to 
hold it (the government) under such difficulties or resign it 
to men who have no honorable principles." 

Yet after all the people lived in peace. Again Logan 
writes " In this country we have no such settled estates and 
constant incomes; yet want not the blessings of the neces- 
saries of life; very few things wanting except some luxu- 
ries. As for myself I bless the Almighty I w^ant nothing of 
the useful conveniences but live equal with my neighbors 
and desire not an abundance." 

William Penn was now in the thick of his controversy 
with the Fords and part of the time was lying in a debtors' 
prison in England. The troubles in his colony preyed upon 
him and he was told very plainly that peace could only be 
secured by the discharge of Evans. Isaac Norris who was 
in England aiding him in settling affairs with his creditors 
urged the same, and Penn was finally freed by a compromise 
on the debts and the promise to appoint a new governor. 
The province was mortgaged for the debt to a number of his 
friends to be repaid out of the quit-rents, sale of lands and 
other receipts of the province, and Edward Shippen, Samuel 
Carpenter, Richard Hill and James Logan were made com- 
missioners to perform the active duties under the trust. As 
secretary this all went through the hands of James Logan. 



JAMES LOGAN 129 

The new Deputy-Governor, Colonel Charles Gookin, 
reached Philadelphia in March 1710. He found in session 
the same hostile assembly that had impeached Logan and 
remonstrated to Penn. They showed no signs of any miti- 
gation of their bitterness and immediately began to com- 
plain of the actions of the new official. Some of these com- 
plaints were trivial but they found a real difference in the 
frequently recurring question of military defense. The 
house refused absolutely to endorse the request to furnish 
150 men to join in an attack on Canada or to provide any 
funds for the purpose. They found that the governor had 
been instructed by Penn to refuse to pass any law not ap- 
proved by the Council. But that body was simply an 
advisory body for the governor, not recognized by the 
charter. This recognition by Penn seemed to give it some 
governmental power and the house resented the implication, 
the more so that Logan's influence there was predominant. 
On the whole the Governor, who was rather testy in dispo- 
sition, behaved himself at first with judgment and moder- 
ation. 

Logan now decided that the time had come to strike back 
at Lloyd in counter charges. But here again some political 
fencing prevented any open trial and the exact nature of the 
charges does not appear, but the house, loyal to its Speaker, 
pronounced them false. Logan then sent back a defiant 
message to the Assembly which greatly increased their re- 
sentment, and they directed that he should be sent to prison. 
Their right to take this extreme measure was denied by the 
Governor. Logan was now about ready to carry his case to 
England and after some attempt to delay his passage, he got 
away and in due time was presenting the whole matter to 
the Proprietor in person. 

William Penn never seems to have lost faith in his sec- 
retary as the letters between them, saved through the care 



130 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

and labor of Deborah Norris Logan, abundantly show. 
These letters betray the zeal and fidelity for his employer's 
interests which characterized the secretary, as well as the 
censorious spirit toward opponents which he was continually 
pouring into Penn's mind. He said what he thought and his 
views changed with the years. It is unsafe to form historic 
judgments on the basis alone of certain of his statements, 
but the whole series, combined with the official records of 
the Council and Assembly, afford a ground-work for a fairly 
accurate decision as to the quality of the government of the 
Quaker province through this first decade of the 18th cen- 
tury. 

As a whole one cannot derive much satisfaction from the 
record. There was too much partisanship, too much self- 
ishness, too much ascription of personal motives, among 
Friends to answer the ends of Christian courtesy or good 
government in its best estate. 

The Friends that rallied around James Logan felt keenly 
the difficulties of the Proprietor who had sacrificed so much 
of time, comfort, and money in his effort to found a com- 
monwealth on the basis of principle, and who, they knew, 
could have sold out to the Crown at a great relief to himself 
had he been willing that his colonists should lose something 
of the liberties they had received by the migration. While 
he was sacrificing for the settlers, they seemed disposed to 
deprive him of his just dues in quit-rents and other income 
needed for the government. On the other hand he could 
hardly divest himself of a certain feeling of class distinction. 
His ideal, however much he might keep it down, was a feudal 
lord, an absentee landlord, dispensing with a generous hand 
the blessings of liberty and happiness to willing and loyal 
citizens. Add to this the great dissatisfaction with the per- 
sonal and political conduct of Deputy-Governor Evans, and 
the rather haughty and testy spirit of Logan, devoted to his 



JAMES LOGAN 131 

duty, and, fearless of opposition as he was, and the friends 
of Penn were kept the most of the time in a constant postm-e 
of defense. 

On the other hand the country people who were led by 
David Lloyd had back of them the instinct for liberty and 
equality, the inheritance of the English race, just strength- 
ened by the Puritan spirit and the politics of the Common- 
wealth period. They had a smaller vision than the pro- 
prietor's party, and hence were led into the more obvious 
courses based on present needs which the methods of their 
leader used to the utmost. That able lawyer, faithful to 
the patent implications of Quakerism, but, at least during 
this decade, hardly possessed by its spirit, played with the 
prejudices and material interests of the country population 
at his will. They wanted to live consistently their lives of 
opposition to war and oaths, of strict morality and quiet 
attention to their farms and meetings. They had a dim in- 
stinct of opposition to the city men of growing fortunes, a 
very strong protest against immorality in high places. They 
did not mean to be disloyal to Penn as their conduct in 
1705 made manifest. Had he been with them or sent an 
acceptable deputy they would have worked out their prob- 
lems without great friction, but they become suspicious, 
narrow and partisan, and David Lloyd who knew the value 
of civil liberty and honestly wanted it, had an easy task 
in marshalling the country hosts, sometimes by methods 
which cannot be fully defended, into lines which as reported 
by Logan gave deep offense and disappointment to the 
great-hearted Proprietor. 

It must be remembered however that the conflicts were 
conflicts of leaders. The great bulk of the people carried 
on their work on farm or shop, grateful for the liberties 
they enjoyed, with none of the bitterness of Logan and 
Lloyd. These divisions never showed themselves in the 



132 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANLA 

records of their meetings. At one time Logan seemed to 
think an ecclesiastical separation partly based on politics 
probable, but it never came. The quiet of worship and the 
real goodness which pervaded the rank and file of the mem- 
bership kept down partisanship and allayed acrid feelings. 
The writings of traveling ministers and the good advice of 
the Yearly Meetings indicate the best of feeling and the 
successful pursuance of the church objects. 

The troubles of the Friends as the result of their scruples 
were bringing many of them to the point where they were 
beginning to doubt whether they ought to have anything 
to do with government, — a doubt which the success of the 
following thirty years largely dissipated. We find Isaac 
Norris in a letter to William Penn writing: "We say our 
principles are not destructive or repugnant to civil govern- 
ment and will admit freedom of conscience for all, yet it 
appears to me according to the best scheme I can form from 
the opinions of many Friends, that to be concerned in gov- 
ernment and to hold (maintain) ourselves, we must either 
be independent or entirely by ourselves . . . and not allow 
the liberty of others who make conscience to have an oath; 
... or be as thou used to express it, ' Dissenters in our own 
country.' " 

The problem of liberty of conscience was being worked 
out and, amid the confusion of party rancor, people were 
thinking with fearful hearts that the William Penn ideals 
might not be possible of achievement. The political up- 
heaval of the next year settled some of these questions at 
least temporarily. 

" Thou used to talk about astral influences. I am not 
very superstitious though I cannot but take notice how uni- 
versally and resolutely Friends here were spirited about this 
election," Isaac Norris writes to James Logan still in Eng- 
land after the election for the Assembly which occurred in 



JAMES LOGAN 133 

October, 1710. As soon as they saw that Evans was dis- 
missed and had heard from England of the condition of the 
Proprietor the province as one man returned to its alle- 
giance. An absolutely new Assembly was elected. Lloyd 
himself was defeated. The strongest men in the province 
and the best friends of Penn and Logan were returned. 
Richard Hill became speaker and abundance of good legis- 
lation was passed. Compromises were made on both sides. 
The right to adjourn at pleasure for which Lloyd had fought 
so vigorously was accorded, and the judiciary was estab- 
lished by law. Both impeachments were dropped and 
heard of no more. Supplies were voted liberally for the 
support of the government and £2000 for " the Queen's use " 
without conditions. The real blessings of the free institu- 
tions of Penn were abundantly recognized, and every effort 
was made to bring up to date legislation which had been 
postponed by the political turmoil of the preceding three 
years. The province steadied itself in the face of its prob- 
lems and privileges and set itself to work out its destinj"- 
with cheerful and united effort. 

In the midst of this wave of unity Logan returned from 
England vindicated as far as conditions there would allow, 
and with no loss of confidence on the part of his employer 
and his friends. Moreover he brought with him a pathetic 
appeal from William Penn, then in his 70th year, which he 
may have helped to frame, and to which his knowledge of 
the situation had undoubtedly contributed. The compo- 
sition was however that of Penn and not of Logan. It did 
not reach the province till after the election but had a pro- 
found effect in stimulating the returning loyalty to the Pro- 
prietor. It begins: 

" My old Friends — It is a mournful consideration and 
the cause of deep affliction to me that I am forced by the 
oppressions and disappointments which have fallen to my 



134 



POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 



share in this life to speak to the people of that Province in 
language I once hoped I should never have occasion to use. 
But the many troubles and oppositions I met with from 
thence oblige me in plainness and freedom to expostulate 
with vou concerning the causes of them." 

Then he reviews the liberal principles by which he has 
been guided, his personal work for the province and his 
financial losses and contrasts these with the contentions and 
ingratitude of the settlers. He takes up both the political 
and personal questions which had separated them. Some 
are small and can be readily rectified. " It is a certain sign 
you are strangers to oppression and know nothing but the 
name, that you so lightly bestow it on matters so incon- 
siderable." There are other lawyers except the one by 
whom they have been guided almost exclusively '' whom I 
cannot think so very proper to direct in my affairs," was 
his suggestion as to David Lloyd. Nevertheless, small or 
great, he is very willing to adjust them to suit their con- 
venience so far as is consistent with a fair balance of gov- 
ernmental powers. He defends Logan. "From all the 
charges I have seen or heard of against him I have cause to 
believe that had he been as much in opposition to me as he 
has been understood to stand for me he might have met with 
a milder treatment from his persecutors; and to think that 
any man should be more exposed there on my account and 
instead of finding favour, meet with enmity for his being 
engaged in my service is a melancholy consideration." Thus 
identified with the Proprietor and amply vindicated the 
secretary could afford to return in triumph to the province. 
Finally Penn intimates that the conduct of the Assembly 
might determine whether or not he should sell his interests 

to the Crown. ^ -r, • j a 

This letter was read in all the meetings of Friends and 

was responded to with an outburst of respect and affection. 



JAMES LOGAN I35 

" Sure an overruling hand directed that our thoughts and 
actions here should be answerable to thine there " writes 
Isaac Norris. 

Both Penn's political and financial troubles were now 
somewhat alleviated but enough remained to make his re- 
tention of the proprietorship a matter of serious misgiving. 
He could sell his rights as governor to the Crown, retaining 
his individual property and claims. His situation would 
then become easy and his family amply provided for. Lo- 
gan advised this strongly. While Gookin meant well his 
tactless and unwise assertion of power still made trouble 
and there seemed no end of such little diflBculties. Penn's 
only hesitation came from the fear that his settlers would 
suffer in their maintenance of their principles from the de- 
mands of the English government. War, civil and religious 
liberty, oaths, and the treatment of the red men were very 
vital problems in the new experiment and such arrange- 
ments must be made as would secure the colonists against 
any return of English persecution, against making the 
Quakers " dissenters in their own country." Penn seems to 
have thought that this was accomplished. The transfer 
was arranged and something paid by the government in 
advance, when on the 4th of 8th Month (October) 1712 his 
hand became paralyzed in the midst of a letter to Logan. 
Some months later his wife forwarded the incomplete 
epistle to the secretary with a postscript from Penn, much 
of it illegible but closing with the words " My dear love to 
all my dear friends." 

He lived six years longer, unable to transact business. 
The bargain with the Crown was annulled, ultimately much 
to the gain of the family, and Logan's engagement and in- 
structions thereafter came from Hannah Callowhill Penn 
and her children. 

Shortly before the attack the secretary arranged for pay- 



136 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

ment for past services. He writes later " The Proprietor 
was willing to give me what I would ask for my ten years' 
service and considering his melancholy circumstances in 
1711 I set it only £100 a year currency, for all manner of 
services whatever; but told him I could stay in his service 
no more than two years. But he was seized with an apo- 
plectic fit in less than one year, which tied me down to his 
business, and vastly as it proved to my loss." 

Logan writing in 1714 says that the people are "generally 
pretty easy, all the factions against the proprietor being 
over." There were no more Quaker parties in the govern- 
ment but Logan's troubles were not over. Gookin after 
several years of great harmony with the Assembly became 
disaffected and got on wrong terms with every one. There 
was some cause. His meagre salary was frequently unpaid 
and he was reduced to the necessity of undignified begging 
in procuring an ordinary existence. The personal loyalty 
to Penn reawakened by his appeal of 1710 partly passed 
away when the pecuniary needs of the government seemed 
to conflict with what he considered his personal rights. A 
new generation was growing up who did not know him and 
since his release from active connection with the province 
were less disposed to join with Norris and Logan in a vig- 
orous assertion of his claims. 

First Gookin quarreled with Lloyd (who was in 1715 
again speaker) and the Assembly, because there was not a 
quorum on the day for convening. He afterwards charged 
Norris and Logan, the former now mayor of Philadelphia, 
with disloyalty to the Crown. He himself in retracting the 
charge intimated that he was temporarily deranged, a not 
improbable suggestion. His Council in 1717 sent a unani- 
mous address to William Penn that he be removed, and 
Hannah Penn now manager for her husband appointed Sir 
William Keith as successor. These troubles however did 



JAMES LOGAN 137 

not, except in one particular, seriously distract the good leg- 
islation of the province and matters were rapidly getting 
into shape. 

This one exception related to oaths. There was nothing 
on which Friends were more consistently united than in 
their opposition to the administration and taking of oaths. 
Lloyd was their great champion but Logan and his friends 
were with him. Their objection was party biblical, largely 
their denial of a double standard, one for the court-room and 
another for the shop and the farm. They demanded that 
their yea and nay be taken at their face value whenever 
uttered: they charged that the constant formal and often 
flippant use of the name of the Deity induced irreverence 
and profanity. They refused to have anything to do with 
oaths or to hold any office which necessitated administering 
them. Largely due to Quaker protests reinforced by im- 
prisonment a form of affirmation not very satisfactory had 
been substituted in England. But they also recognized that 
their principle of freedom of conscience, as well as respect 
for English law, could not force affirmations on dissidents in 
Pennsylvania. Up to about 1715 by virtue of acts passed by 
the Assembly matters had gone on quietly and oaths were 
practically not administered. The English law of that year 
put out of all official positions, including juries, and out of 
the witness box, all who did not swear. Now Governor 
Gookin construed this as applying to the colonies. 

In many country districts there were none but Friends 
and illiterate servants and all judicial proceedings were 
stopped. In the city it was not much better as Friends held 
all the important positions and constituted the leadership 
of the political situation. Lloyd gave his legal influence 
vigorously to the cause but the governor stood firm in his 
construction of the law. For two years the province sur- 
vived without courts and criminals went unpunished. An 



138 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

atrocious murder committed in Chester County seemed to 
make it necessary to do something, and the culprit was 
condemned to death on the strength of unsworn testimony 
and by an unsworn jury. Appeal was made to England but 
Keith, by this time governor, hung the criminal. 

We' may carry this account ahead of our general nar- 
rative. Sir William Keith, a man of great political acute- 
ness, suggested that if the Assembly would adopt the Eng- 
lish penal code they might in exchange have their way m 
the matter of oaths. Lloyd and his friends agreed and m 
1718 placed burglary and some dozen crimes on the capital 
list in the same act making affirmations and oaths optional 
with the taker. The form of affirmation included however 
the phrase " in the presence of Almighty God," to which 
many Friends objected and in 1725 this was further modi- 
fied to make it a simple affirmation. This relieved the 
taker but as oaths could still be demanded by those without 
scruples in the matter, there was nothing for the consistent 
Friend to do but refuse an official position which involved 
administering them, so that in this respect Friends became 
" dissenters in their own country." The solution found m 
1725 still continues. 

The extension of the capital code from Penns limitation 
to murder in the first degree to a number of lower forms of 
crime seems to have met with no opposition from Friends 
and was continued through all colonial times without pro- 
test Thus John Smith a prominent Friend writes in his 
diary in 1747, '' Was part of the day at the Court of Oyer 
and Terminer called on purpose to try three villains for a 
burglary and robbery of the widow Cox at my accusing 
which was so clearly proved that the Jury soon found them 
guilty " And again a day later, '' Heard that sentence of 
death was passed on the poor villains mentioned above 
Better times were coming for the secretary. In 1714 he 



JAMES LOGAN I39 

made a happy marriage with Sarah the daughter of Charles 
Read, a Councillor prominent in public affairs. He en- 
gaged in the Indian trade and in commercial ventures which 
ultimately brought him a considerable fortune. His friends 
were the most intellectual and most influential citizens of 
Philadelphia including " wise Samuel Carpenter," Isaac 
Norris, and Richard Hill, " the three best heads in Penn- 
sylvania," as he says. He himself was their peer in busi- 
ness sagacity and their superior in learning and scholarly 
interests. The voice of faction among Friends had ceased 
and England presented after the peace of 1710-12 no claims 
for military service for almost 30 years. The oath question 
was settled. There was litigation over William Penn's 
Estate but this was confined to England and ultimately 
resulted in 1726 in confirming the title in the hands of John, 
Thomas, and Richard Penn, the sons of the second wife. 
These became warm friends of Logan and fully trusted him, 
while he returned to them as agent and secretary the same 
unswerving fidelity which he had accorded to their father. 
The great immigration of Germans and Scotch-Irish solved 
the financial difiiculty by land sales and quit-rents. Wise 
legislation placed the government in smooth working order, 
and a satisfactory system of courts was established. The 
management of Logan kept the Indians friendly. Taxes 
were trifling. The average provincial expenditure under 
Keith's administration was 1500 pounds a year. Laws for- 
bidding the use of molasses and other foreign substances in 
the manufacture of beer, and requiring that all flour and 
salted provisions should be up to a standard quality, thus 
insuring a great foreign trade, stimulated home production, 
while the immense immigration vastly increased the product 
of the farms. Peace and liberty were proving their efiicacy 
as agents of prosperity and comfort, enriching alike country 
farmer and city trader. 



140 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

There was however much difficulty owing to the scarcity 
of circuhiting medium, for the imports still were in great 
excess of exports, and had to be paid for. Keith suggested 
a paper issue based on land and plate. But Logan, warned 
by the unfortunate experiments in other colonies, opposed it 
vigorously. The bill went through the Assembly however 
and Logan's opposition had the very desirable effect of 
making it a conservative measure. Hence the paper never 
depreciated and greatly increased trade. 

An Indian incident of 1722 will illustrate the methods by 
which peace on the frontiers was maintained. The council 
was informed that a red man of the Five Nations had been 
killed in what is now Lancaster County by two whites 
named Cartledge. James Logan and Colonel French were 
deputed to ascertain the facts. They called a council of 
Indians at the place of the murder and had the suspected 
criminals arrested. Logan made one of his happy speeches, 
for he was now well versed in Indian psychology, calling 
attention to the league of friendship made by William Penn 
and that the league had been rigidly observed by both 
parties. Only one complaint had been made for forty 
years. Now a report had come of a murder by a white man, 
and they had come to condole with the friends of the victim 
and see that justice be done according to the league of 
friendship. 

Witnesses were then examined by which it appeared that 
the Indian was setting his traps when the Cartledges came 
to him to trade. They gave him rum and he persisted in his 
demand for more till the trader irritated struck him so that 
he died. A message was sent to the Senecas in New York 
with a statement of regret and that the offenders were to be 
taken to Philadelphia to answer for their fault. After va- 
rious circumlocutions and conferences and exchanges of 
wampum belts final word came to Philadelphia as follows: 



JAMES LOGAN 141 

" We have well considered all you have spoken and like 
it well, because it is only the renewing of the former leagues 
and treaties made between the government of Pennsylvania 
and the Five Nations, which we always believed we were 
obliged to keep. And as to the accident of one of our 
friends being killed by some of your people, which has hap- 
pened by misfortune and against your will, we say that we 
are all in peace; we think it hard the persons who killed our 
friend and brother should suffer and we do in the name of 
all the Five Nations forgive the offence and desire you will 
likewise forgive it, and that the men who did it may be 
released from prison and set at liberty to go whither they 
please; and we shall esteem that as a mark of regard and 
friendship for the Five Nations and as a further confirma- 
tion of this treaty." 

The Indians on the Brandywine sent a petition to the 
Assembly making complaint against the whites for in- 
fringement of their fishing rights. They asserted that Wil- 
liam Penn had granted them a tract a mile on either side of 
the Creek, the deed for which had been burned in the cabin 
in which it was kept. There was no record of such a treaty. 
The English had settled all over this tract and worse still 
had built dams which prevented the passage of fish. While 
the story was based on no legal claims Logan recognized the 
vitality of Indian tradition, and induced the governor to 
order that the dams should be constructed so as to allow 
the fish to pass. 

These incidents are illustrations of the management of 
Indian relations through the first half century of the prov- 
ince under William Penn and James Logan, It is easy to 
see why there was uninterrupted peace. There is probably 
no record of Logan's attitude toward the Walking Purchase 
and the iniquities that followed it, but it may be assumed to 
accord with his other actions. 

There is a story that the old chief Wingohocking became 
so friendly that he offered to change names with Logan. 



142 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

It was not entirely convenient to accept the offer, but 
the chief must not be antagonized. So Logan replied that 
he would soon pass away and be forgotten, but the stream, 
pointing to one which went through his fields, would flow on 
through all generations, and he would give it the Indian 
name to be carried down forever. This happy expedient 
satisfied the Indian who changed his name to Logan and 
transferred his own to the stream which still perpetuates it. 
Twenty years after the Cartledge incident when James 
Logan was an old man, a chief of the Six Nations expressed 
his kind regard for him in Indian fashion to the Governor 
and Council in Philadelphia: 

" Brethren we called at our old friend James Logan's on 
our way to the city, and to our grief we found him hid in 
the bushes and retired through infirmities from the public 
business. We pressed him to leave his retirement and pre- 
vailed with him to assist once more on our account at your 
council. We hope notwithstanding his age and the effects 
of a fit of sickness which we understand has hurt his consti- 
tution that he may continue a long time to assist this prov- 
ince with his counsels. He is a wise man and a fast friend 
to the Indians; and we desire when his soul goes to God, 
you may choose in his room just such another person of the 
same prudence and ability in counselling and of the same 
tender disposition and affection for the Indians." 

Sir William Keith had proved a popular and politic gov- 
ernor. He had shown Friends a solution of the oath diffi- 
culty; had carried through the movement for a paper cur- 
rency; had suggested many pieces of good legislation; and 
by his agreeable manners had made a most favorable im- 
pression on the people. But after nearly ten years' service 
he ran up against Logan and his friends in a delicate mat- 
ter of management. Theoretically the Council had no legal 
rights in legislation, being only an advisory body for the 
governor. But he was nevertheless the creature of the Penn 



JAMES LOGAN 143 

family who had implicit trust in Logan and who had sent 
instructions that no measures were to be passed without the 
consent of the majority of the Council. Keith tried various 
devices to rid himself of this incumbrance. On the other 
hand the Council tried to set up an unjustifiable claim that 
its relations to government were somewhat like those of the 
House of Lords in England, and held as strictly to their 
powers as possible. Keith for a time carried on the contest 
with his usual astuteness, but in 1722 becoming bolder in 
his methods and feeling sure of popular support, on the plea 
that Logan had entered on the minutes something that had 
not officially passed the Council, the governor discharged 
him from his offices as councillor, secretary and keeper of 
the great seal. He was thus thrown entirely out of the gov- 
ernment. 

But he was not of the sort that submit easily to such a 
dismissal. He sailed to England and returned in a little 
time with definite instructions from Hannah Penn. Keith 
was to make at least half his board Quakers and no new 
members were to be appointed without the consent of those 
already in. He was to send no verbal or written messages 
to the Assembly without their consent. He was to rein- 
state Logan in all his offices, and was threatened with dis- 
missal if he further disobeyed. 

This was humiliating enough to a man of such large in- 
fluence and importance, still more so that it came from the 
hands of Logan. He decided not to submit and prepared a 
reply justifying his actions to the Assembly. This brought 
to his aid the old war-horse David Lloyd, now Chief Justice 
of the province, who gave his legal advice to the support of 
the independent powers of the Assembly and the non-inter- 
ference of the Council. The Assembly backed up their old 
leader and assured Keith of their gratitude. But they could 
not prevent his dismissal by Mrs. Penn and when he was 



144 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

himself elected a member of their body and aspired to the 
speakership he was easily defeated by David Lloyd. 

He was succeeded by Patrick Gordon, a wise old man who 
seemed to harmonize the hitherto conflicting claims of Pro- 
prietor and Assembly. For ten years, 1726 to 1736, there 
was great peace and prosperity. There was a vast influx of 
foreigners, Palatines from the Rhine Valley and Presbyte- 
rians from the north of Ireland, as many as 6000 to 8000 per 
year. Many were poor, without money even to pay for their 
passages, and were sold out to service in the Delaware River 
for a term of years. This supplied abundant labor but the 
influx was not looked upon with much favor by the Phila- 
delphians. Problems of illiteracy and sanitation demanded 
much attention. A tax of 40 shillings per head was passed 
on all aliens imported. The Germans, as a report to the 
Assembly asserted, " had purchased and honestly paid for 
their lands, had conducted themselves respectfully towards 
the government, paid their taxes readily and were a sober 
and honest people in their religious and civil duties." Yet 
they would use their own language and lived very much to 
themselves. The Irish moved to the frontiers and their in- 
considerate treatment of the Indians was already beginning 
to stir up trouble which developed later. It seemed that the 
colony would soon contain a foreign population. The fran- 
chise was however still largely in the hands of the original 
settlers and their descendants. It was limited to men who 
owned 50 acres of land or had an income of 50 pounds a 
year. This was probably the most liberal of all the colonial 
laws and far more so than those of England; but it tended 
to continue a literate and hereditary electorate. The As- 
sembly was constituted of 26 members, eight from each of 
the three original counties of Chester, Philadelphia, and 
Bucks and two from the city. As these country districts 
were almost exclusively Friendly a large majority of, and 



JAMES LOGAN 145 

frequently all, its members belonged to the governing sect. 
When new counties were admitted (Lancaster being the first 
in 1729) they were accorded a smaller representation and 
this was not increased as their population grew. This in 
time constituted a real grievance. 

There were no infractions of religious liberty and no the- 
ological tests for suffrage except such as were imposed by 
the English Crown. It was a time of great distrust of 
Roman Catholics on account of their supposed allegiance 
to the exiled Stuart family and the French interests. St. 
Joseph's Church had been built in the city and mass was 
openly celebrated there contrary to English law. The 
Council however decided that Pennsylvania was an excep- 
tion and that all sects were protected by the charter. Le- 
gally the position of the Council was probably indefensible 
but the matter was allowed to rest. 

The Friends by this time had outgrown all internal 
political parties and worked together. They were without 
question the governing body, and while making no legal 
discrimination against other religions, by virtue of their 
personal character and training and their well organized sys- 
tem, maintained an easy leadership. There is no evidence 
that they used their ecclesiastical order to advance their 
political schemes, but their close friendships produced the 
same effects. How their candidates were selected is not 
very evident, but probably by an informal meeting of their 
influential men. An entry of John Smith's diary speaks of 
such a meeting. To these selections the body of voters 
seemed to be loyal. A good man in the Assembly was re- 
elected year after year, for thirty years in the cases of 
George Ashbridge from Chester County and Isaac Norris 
2nd from Philadelphia. It was the high water time of 
Quaker management and they were giving a good account 
of themselves. The commerce of the colony was develop- 



146 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

ing at a rapid rate increasing threefold during Gordon's ad- 
ministration. The problems were those of development and 
not of dissension. 

In 1731 in succession to David Lloyd, James Logan be- 
came Chief Justice of the province which post he held for 
five years. His most notable achievement was a charge de- 
livered to the Grand Jury in 1736, in which at some length 
he goes over the functions of government and the duties of 
juries in keeping public life up to high standards. This 
was printed in America and England and received much 
notice. 

In 1736 on the death of Gordon and pending the appoint- 
ment of a successor Logan as President of the Council be- 
came nominal head of the government. He accepted the 
responsibility with great reluctance. " I am now entering 
my 63rd year," he writes John Penn the eldest of the propri- 
etors, " much weakened in all respects and so circumstanced 
that I am every way unfit for it; and I now greatly blame 
myself for submitting to it on the governor's decease. But 
next in standing to me being Samuel Preston, who is yet 
more weakened by age and too rigidly strict in his profes- 
sion for government ... I was prevailed upon to accept 
it, in hopes it might hold only for a few months; and if not 
relieved, as I have said, I must relinquish it, let it fall where 
it will." 

The Council had no legal part in legislation and hence 
while the Assembly met to advise, no laws were passed for 
two years, because there was no governor empowered to 
sign them. Logan, now the chief man of the colony, had 
charge of all executive duties. The most important of these 
related to the quarrel with the governor of Maryland over 
the still undetermined boundary line. A " war " between 
two sheriffs' posses resulted in one man being killed on 
each side and a number being placed in jail. This might 



JAMES LOGAN I47 

have developed further, but an order from the King was 
sent over which resulted in a temporary peace and the re- 
lease of all prisoners. No lands were to be granted by 
either province in the disputed territory till further orders. 

The great speech of Andrew Hamilton, the first lawyer 
of the colony, not a Friend, is the best testimony to the 
happy conditions in 1739 when he gave up the speakership. 

Logan desired that John Penn should succeed to the gov- 
ernorship. He distrusted Thomas's ability to get along 
with the people. " If it is so ordered," he writes John, " I 
shall very heartily wish it may prove to his own and all 
your satisfaction; yet I have too much reason to doubt of 
it. An open freedom and plainness, or an effectual appear- 
ance of it I take to be absolutely necessary to a governor." 

But George Thomas was appointed in 1738. He was not 
a Quaker and did not understand them. There would have 
been trouble in ordinary times but the Spanish War broke 
out a year later and the demands of England, unwisely 
pressed by him upon the Assembly, created the first friction 
due to a martial cause since 1712. The Friends by this 
time had settled down into the policy of refusal to force 
any one to fight, Quaker or non-Quaker, or to levy taxes 
ostensibly for war purposes. They would not interfere 
with voluntary enlistments, and they would vote money 
" for the King's use " even when they knew that some of it 
would go for martial purposes. Governor Thomas mis- 
reported them to England and proposed that they should be 
kept out of government by the requirement of an official 
oath. He declined to sign bills because they did not em- 
brace military appropriations and because they did not 
raise the money as he desired, and they opposed him by re- 
fusing him a salary. The proprietors were now on his side 
and the military spirit of the non-Quakers of the city was 
rising. The Germans who loved neither taxes nor war 



148 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

voted for their friends and the Assembly was steadily sup- 
ported by the electors. 

The contest is explained elsewhere.^ We will here con- 
fine ourselves to James Logan's part. He had not changed 
his views on the morality of defensive war since he came 
over with William Penn in 1699. Up to this time there 
had seemed no occasion to diverge openly from the stand 
taken by other Friends. Now the issue was more clearly 
drawn and in 1741 he addressed a letter to the Yearly Meet- 
ing. In this he admits that the unlawfulness of all war ac- 
cording to Christian standards is a well-understood prin- 
ciple of Friends and always has been. Nevertheless as all 
government is founded on force there are conditions when 
this force must be drilled and armed. While Friends trust 
that having done their duty, by means which they consider 
moral, Providence will protect them, they do not observe 
Christ's other precepts but lay up treasures on earth in 
which they have been so successful that the province would 
now be a choice prey for an invader. Only one-third of the 
people are Friends and others are clamoring for defense, 
and finally he urges that those who for conscience' sake can- 
not join to protect the province should decline to be can- 
didates for official position. The paper was referred to a 
committee which reported that it related to governmental 
matters and was not suitable to be read in their meeting. 

A letter from Richard Peters to John Penn says that 
when the report of the committee was presented Robert 
Strettell ^ alone in the meeting stated that owing to the im- 
portance of their old member, whose life evinced his attach- 
ment to the Society, the refusal to read the letter would 
alienate himself and English Friends, but someone plucked 

1 See Isaac Norris and John Kinsey. . 

2 A few years later Robert Strettell was disowned for arming tiis 

ship. 



JAMES LOGAN 149 

him by the coat and told him " Sit thee down, Robert, thou 
art single (alone) in this matter." 

The matter produced some discussion. It was pointed 
out that it was not the fact of force but the methods of 
force, that was objected to and that the police agent used 
his for the protection not the destruction of Society, and 
did not engage in the cruelties attendant on warfare. That 
the Friends did not represent the whole province was an- 
swered in the next election by returning the old house, even 
from districts not much inhabited by Friends. " In the 
most remote county of this province," says a Meeting re- 
port " at the last election all the representatives returned to 
serve in the Assembly were of our Society ; and though those 
in the opposition to Friends were very active yet of 1150 
freeholders that voted (in which there were not above 20 
Friends) they could prevail with scarce 200 to join them." 

James Logan was also out of sympathy with Friends in 
the matter of lotteries. For some unexplained reason they 
had got about a century ahead of general public sentiment 
in opposing them and had gone so far as to disown members 
who bought tickets or managed a raffle. Since about 1720 
their utterances were very definite and later, while other 
bodies were building universities and churches, court houses 
and jails and public improvements in general from their 
proceeds, they remained aloof. In 1747 Logan joined with 
Benjamin Franklin and others in establishing a great lottery 
from the proceeds of which a battery was to be erected on 
the Delaware River for defense, and he directed that any 
profits assigned to him should go directly to the support of 
the battery. 

The last decade of his life was spent at Stenton, where 
he exercised boundless hospitality, engaged in classical and 
scientific studies and writings, and was consulted on pub- 
lic affairs. In 1729 he had a fall which broke his thigh and 
made him a cripple for the rest of his life. 



150 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

His residence, the best specimen of a colonial home still 
standing, was built in 1728 on his tract of 500 acres near 
what is now Wayne Junction on the Philadelphia and Read- 
ing Railroad. In the main room of the second story, sur- 
rounded by his books he spent his time, the grand old man 
of the colony, respected by all. While differing from his 
coreligionists on certain ethical matters and taking but 
little part in church affairs, he had great sympathy with 
their spiritual attitude in all religious concerns. His fam- 
ily, more Friendly than himself, retained a close associa- 
tion with the leading Friends of the city and formed a part 
of that delightful society of religious and intellectual souls 
so pleasantly described by John Smith. 

Outside of his denomination he had the hearty respect of 
all. Benjamin Franklin looked up to him for advice and 
aid, which was not very generously reciprocated. He was 
a leading factor in founding the school which afterv/ards de- 
veloped into the University of Pennsylvania, and was 
Overseer of the " Public Schools " founded by the Charter 
of William Penn. To him repaired the men responsible for 
the affairs of the province to consult concerning legislation 
and measures of finance and management, for his most in- 
timate knowledge of all the details of the history of the 
province and his acquaintance with the Penn family, to- 
gether with his steady judgment made him an unrivalled 
authority in all colonial concerns. The sons of William 
Penn trusted him as implicitly as did their father and he 
gave them good advice with a free hand. His own success 
in trade made him independent of any financial payments 
from them, which suited their rather penurious habits. No 
charge of misappropriation or cupidity was ever made 
against him, indeed his services to William Penn were ever 
generous. Indians by the hundreds for days at a time 
camped on his place, in grounds especially set apart for 



JAMES LOGAN 151 

them, to receive his advice and largesses. Stenton was a 
center of the intellectual, social and political life of the 
city. 

His intellectual interests were varied. He conducted ex- 
periments on the fertilization of plants and announced re- 
sults verified by modern science. These were published in 
Latin in Leyden and London. He investigated and wrote 
upon the angular appearance of lightning and the cause of 
the apparent increase of sun and moon near the horizon. 
When Thomas Godfrey was working out his trade as painter 
and glazier at Stenton, the idea which afterwards developed 
into the sextant for finding latitude at sea occurred to him. 
Logan wrote this up for the Royal Society and elsewhere, 
but the reward for the discovery was given to Hadley. 
Other scientific publications in Latin followed at intervals. 
Linnaeus in recognition of his botanical knowledge named 
an order of trees and shrubs the Loganacece. 

But the Latin Classics constituted his favorite study and 
his most distinguished publication was his translation of 
Cicero's De Senectute, which was printed by Franklin. 

His long correspondence with his old-time rival but after- 
wards fast friend Thomas Story has been printed. Thomas 
Story was a much esteemed minister among Friends who 
after fourteen years spent in Pennsylvania moved to Eng- 
land where he was closely associated with William Penn in 
his later years and lived to an old age. The letters relate 
to many scientific, philosophical and religious subjects, in- 
dicating serious study on the part of both. It is interesting 
to note a statement of Thomas Story, written in 1738. " I 
spent some months at Scarborough, attending the meetings, 
at whose high cliffs and the great variety of strata therein, 
and their present positions I further learned and was con- 
firmed in some things; and that the earth is of much older 
date as to the beginning of it than the time assigned in the 



152 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Holy Scriptures, as commonly understood, which is suited 
to the common capacities of the human kind, as to five days 
progressive work; by which I understand certain long and 
competent periods of time and not natural days." This 
may have been the beginning of the attempted harmony of 
Genesis and Geology. 

James Logan spent much time and money in collecting 
the most scholarly library, certainly in the province, pos- 
sibly in America. It was his regret as he writes Thomas 
Story " that my considerable collection of Greek and Roman 
authors, with others in various languages will not find an 
heir in my family to use them when I have gone." Some 
time before his death he determined to give them to the 
city as the nucleus of a public library, and in his will, writ- 
ten two years before he died, he says: 

" In my library which I have left to the city of Philadel- 
phia for the facilitating and advancement of classical learn- 
ing are about one hundred authors in folio all in Greek with 
mostly their versions ; all the Roman classics without excep- 
tion; all the old Greek mathematicians, viz., Archimedes, 
Euclid and Ptolemy. . . . Besides these are many of the 
most valuable Latin authors, and a great number of modern 
mathematicians, with all the three editions of Newton, Dr. 
Halley, Wallis, etc." He bequeathed this library of 3000 
volumes together with an endowment for its increase and the 
salary of the librarian to the city of Philadelphia. It 
formed the Loganian Library, which later was included in 
the Philadelphia Library. 

The annalist Watson says, " James Logan was tall and 
well-proportioned with a graceful yet grave demeanor. He 
had a good complexion and was quite florid even in old age; 
nor did his hair which was brown turn grey in the decline 
of life, nor his eyes require spectacles. According to the 
custom of the times he wore a powdered wig. His whole 



JAMES LOGAN I53 

demeanor was dignified so as to abash impertinence; yet 
he was kind and strictly just in all the duties of acquaint- 
ance and society." 

William Black, a Virginia visitor at Stenton, gives a 
somewhat different story. " I was very much surprised at 
the appearance of so charming a woman (his daughter 
Hannah) where the seeming moroseness and goutified 
Father's appearance promised no such beauty, though it 
must be allowed the man seemed to have some remains of a 
handsome enough person and a complection beyond his 
years for he was turned 70." 

He died October 31st, 1751, having just entered his 77th 
year, having for a half century placed his impress deeply on 
the history of Pennsylvania. 

James Logan had seven children, three of whom died 
young. Sarah Logan in 1739 married Isaac Norris, the 
Speaker, of whom James Logan says that he was the most 
learned man in the colony except Richard Peters, the Rector 
of Christ Church. Their daughter Mary married John 
Dickinson. 

William Logan was sent to England under the care of his 
uncle Dr. William Logan of Bristol to be educated. He be- 
came a member of the Council, succeeded his father in care 
of the Penn estates, and was the heir to Stenton. As Coun- 
cillor he stood out alone in 1756 in opposition to a declara- 
tion of war against the Indians. His life indicates a closer 
association with the Friends and more complete sympathy 
with their moral positions than his father. His son was Dr. 
George Logan, a leader in state affairs after the Revolution, 
a student of agriculture, a Senator of the United States, a 
lover of peace. When in the closing years of the century 
there was a prospect of a French war, he went on an un- 
official visit to Talleyrand and thought that he had large 
influence in averting it. But Congress passed the " Logan 



154 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Act " which made such interference illegal and punishable. 
Notwithstanding he tried again a few years later with Eng- 
land but with less success, for the War of 1812 followed. 
His wife was the accomplished Deborah Norris, niece of 
the Speaker, to whom all Pennsylvania historians are vastly 
indebted for the preservation and copying of thousands of 
pages of Logan Manuscripts. These covering the time for 
ten years after 1701 are published as "The Penn and Logan 
Correspondence." She and her husband made Stenton the 
center of the best life of the republic. Washington, Jeffer- 
son, Franklin, Randolph and many other leading statesmen 
during the days when Philadelphia was the capital city were 
entertained with elegant hospitality and the best of Quaker 
society. Their son Albanus Logan married the daughter of 
John Dickinson. 

Hannah Logan married John Smith who kept the Diary^ 
which gives such an interesting insight into the life of the 
Quaker group which before the war led the colony in its 
politics and social life. She became a minister. Her hand 
was desired by Charles Norris, brother of the Speaker, later 
the father of Deborah Norris Logan, and the two families 
lost much of their intimacy on account of John Smith's suc- 
cess. 

James Logan Jr. left no children. 

When to this complicated family relationship is added the 
fact that Richard Hill, Samuel Preston and Isaac Norris all 
married daughters of Thomas Lloyd, that Israel Pemberton 
Sr. married a sister of the wife of James Logan and their son 
James a granddaughter of Thomas Lloyd, it will be seen 
how closely associated by family ties were nearly all the 
leading men of the " Quaker governing class," a class of 
which the founders were Thomas Lloyd and James Logan. 

1 See Hannah Logan's Courtship, well edited by Albert Cook 
Myers, 1904. 



JAMES LOGAN 155 

After William Penn, the only two prominent men mentioned 
in these pages not nearly related to the others were David 
Lloyd and John Kinsey. 



JOHN KINSEY 

After William Penn, no Colonial Quaker had the abso- 
lute confidence of Friends in cliurch affairs, and at the 
same time the strong leadership in the state to the extent 
possessed by John Kinsey. During the last decade of his 
rather short life he was the clerk of the Yearly Meeting and 
its most responsible and influential member. He was also 
the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Province, 
Speaker of the Assembly and the undoubted leader of his 
party in political management. By this time the factions 
within the Society had practically disappeared. It was one 
loyal united body in both state and church. The differences 
which separated Thomas Lloyd and George Keith and later 
David Lloyd and James Logan were no longer existent. 
New issues were soon to arise but when John Kinsey came 
most prominently before the people, there was this calm 
which had been cemented by about thirty years of peace and 
prosperity, after the political upheaval of 1710. During 
this time the memory of the great Founder had grown more 
and more in the esteem of his people. His government was 
established in popular regard as a model of liberality and 
wisdom. His words were quoted and his example pointed 
to, in settling the problems which arose. 

John Kinsey's grandfather, John Kinsey, was a member 
of the little band which settled Burlington in 1677. He 
died a few days after his landing at the Swedish Settlement 
of Shackamaxon. His standing may be estimated by the 
fact that he was one of the Commissioners sent by the pro- 
prietors of West Jersey to guard their interests. His son 

156 



JOHN KINSEY I57 

John Kinsey the second was a prominent lawyer. In 1716 
he was elected to the legislature of New Jersey, of which he 
was for several years the Speaker. He was also an active 
and acceptable minister among Friends, traveling exten- 
sively through the colonies. 

John Kinsey the third had therefore an inheritance of 
legal and ecclesiastical faculty which he greatly developed 
in himself. At the same time he had the Quaker discipline 
of his youth, and a religious tendency in his early days 
which steadied and utilized his great powers to a life de- 
voted to public service. 

He was born in Burlington in 1693. He studied law, 
was elected to the Assembly of New Jersey and became its 
speaker as the successor to his father. There are too few 
records of his public life and still less of his private to en- 
able us to fill up this bare recital. 

The first we hear of him in Philadelphia is in 1725 when 
he came to plead a case in court before Governor William 
Keith. He began to speak with his hat on. The governor 
who should have better informed himself as to Quaker 
scruples ordered him to take it off. He refused stating that 
he was acting from conscientious motives. The governor 
ordered the court officers to remove it and the incident 
seemed closed. 

But to the Quarterly Meeting it was too vital a matter 
to be dropped in this way. It was an attack upon their 
religious liberty as they deemed it and they sent a formal 
protest to the governor. 

" There is no people more willing than the Friends to pay 
all due regards to their superiors, to offer all honor to the 
courts of justice, and in every way consistent with their re- 
ligious persuasions to pay all deference to their government 
and king; but when our conception of an individual's per- 
sonal liberty is trespassed upon, we have openly and firmly 
borne our testimony against it in all countries and places 
where our lots have fallen," 



158 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Keith was a politic man determined to get along with 
every one. He could not afford to contest a little point 
like this with a people so strong in numbers and in influence 
as the Friends then were and the following entry is found 
in the records of the court. 

" On consideration of the humble address presented to 
the Governor this day, read in open court, from the Quar- 
terly Meeting of the people called Quakers, for the city and 
county of Philadelphia, it is ordered that the said address 
be filed with the register, and that it be made a standing 
rule of the Court of Chancery for the Province of Penn- 
sylvania, in all time to come, that any person whatsoever, 
professing himself to be one of the people called Quakers, 
may and shall be admitted, if they think fit, to speak, or 
otherwise officiate, and apply themselves decently unto the 
said courts without being obliged to observe the usual cere- 
mony of uncovering their heads, by having their hats taken 
off; and such privilege hereby ordered and granted the 
people called Quakers shall at no time hereafter be under- 
stood or interpreted as any contempt or neglect of the said 
court, but shall be taken only as an act of conscientious 
liberty, of right appertaining to the religious persuasion of 
the said people, and agreeable to their practices in all the 
civil affairs of life." 

To understand why the good Friends of the day made so 
much of this question of the hat, we must know the condi- 
tions of the times. During the 17th century men were ac- 
customed to wear a head covering in the house as well as 
outside. They took it off only as an honor accorded to per- 
sons in superior station, and expected those of lower rank 
to take theirs off to themselves. The regicide judges re- 
fused to uncover their heads when they tried King Charles 
and of course he refused to recognize their standing by un- 
covering his. A century later at the outbreak of the French 
Revolution the popular Assembly insisted on wearing their 
hats in the presence of the nobility, as a testimony to their 



JOHN KINSEY I59 

equality. The sturdy Puritanism of the early Friends dis- 
posed of the matter once for all, by uncovering to no one 
save God, neither to King nor Magistrate, Priest nor Judge. 
Bitterly they suffered for this testimony to democracy. 
They went to jail for months at the command of angry 
judges. William Penn wore his hat before King Charles II 
and the pleasant monarch, remarking that it was not cus- 
tomary in that presence for more than one to remain cov- 
ered, took off his own. Under all circumstances they stood 
by their convictions, taking all that came of imprisonment, 
contempt or ridicule. 

It was in 1725 too near this time for the cause to be given 
away in a Quaker Province, governed by the sons of those 
who had suffered in England and the meetings unanimously 
accepted the challenge. Afterwards no Quaker lawyer or 
witness was required to remove his hat during colonial days. 

John Kinsey moved to Philadelphia in 1730 at the age 
of 37 and the same year was made clerk of Philadelphia 
Yearly Meeting. He was the strong and useful man of 
the body and held the place till his death 20 years later. 

The records of the meeting for these twenty years are 
full of John Kinsey's work. His name was scarcely ever 
absent from any important committee. The literary work 
of Friends of this time, including the London Epistles, the 
collection of minutes for the new discipline, the epistles to 
subordinate meetings, was very largely done by him. Dur- 
ing most of the time he was engaged in gathering materials 
for writing a history of the early days of the province, which 
material afterwards passed into the hands of Samuel Smith. 
He was the medium through whom the decisions of the 
meeting were conveyed to the public, as, note for instance, 
the following minute of 1738: 

" John Kinsey was ordered to draw an advertisement to 
be printed in the newspapers of Philadelphia, in order to 



i6o POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

inform all whom it may concern that the book lately pub- 
lished by Benjamin Lay was not published by approbation 
of Friends; that he is not in unity with us, and that his book 
contains false charges as well against particular persons of 
our Society as against Friends in general." 

Equally prompt was the State of Pennsylvania to demand 
his services. On the 20th of January, 1731, the sheriff 
asked admittance to the Assembly with the message: " In 
pursuance of a writ of the said sheriff, directed by the 
honorable the governor of the Province, John Kinsey, Gen- 
tleman, the day and year above mentioned was elected a 
representative in the Legislature to serve in the General As- 
sembly of Pennsylvania this present year, in room of David 
Potts,^ lately deceased." On the next day John Kinsey took 
his seat which he held, with one slight intermission, to his 
death and after 1739 was Speaker. 

As with the Meeting so with the Legislature John Kinsey 
immediately became the important member, drawing up 
bills and addresses to the Governor, acting on committees, 
as trustee of public funds and real estate, as witness that the 
great seal was properly attached to laws and wherever good 
sense and legal training could serve the public interests. 
For several years he was in addition Attorney-General of 
the Province. 

So matters went on till 1739 when Andrew Hamilton re- 
signed the Speakership, tired of its responsibilities and 
duties, and his faithful and unrewarded attention to the 
building of the State House. He had handed in his final 
accounts, and made his great farewell speech, perhaps the 
best resume of Pennsylvania Colonial conditions ever given. 
There was no doubt that John Kinsey should be his suc- 
cessor. 

* Diivid Potts was a Friend and an ancestor of Theodore Roose- 
velt. 



JOHN KINSEY i6i 

On October 15, 1739 the Assembly met and " by a major- 
ity vote " made John Kinsey Speaker. The same day they 
presented him to the Governor, George Thomas, an ap- 
pointee of the Penn Family, who expressed in the formal 
way his satisfaction with their choice. He then made the 
usual requests of the Governor " that the House might have 
ready access to him at all reasonable times when the public 
business should require it: that they might enjoy freedom 
of speech in all their propositions and debates: that the 
members might be exempted from arrest during the sittings 
of the Assembly: that the Governor should give no ear to 
reports touching debates in the House till matters debated 
on passed into resolves; and that the Speaker's inadvertent 
mistakes might be excused. All of which he had requested 
as the just rights of the Freemen of Pennsylvania: and the 
Governor was pleased to assure the House that they should 
be protected in the full use and exercise of the same." 

This little list of legislative privileges represented the 
gains made in the years by the Quaker Assembly, in secur- 
ing the independence of the people's representatives from 
encroachment of the Proprietors and Governor. They were 
not likely to lose any of it under John Kinsey 's vigorous 
leadership. 

While they did not know it at the time the easy days of 
Quaker control were about at an end. They were to struggle 
along in the midst of wars and rumors of wars for some sev- 
enteen years longer, but against an ever increasing opposi- 
tion from the Proprietors on one side and the militant portion 
of the population on the other. While John Kinsey was 
alive they fought the battle successfully in the legislative 
halls and at the polls. The contest began on the day fol- 
lowing the choice of John Kinsey as Speaker. 

About the same time that John Kinsey took up the 
Speakership, George Thomas was made Lieutenant-Gov- 



1 62 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

ernor under the Penns. He knew very little about the char- 
acter of the people whom he came from the West Indies to 
govern, but he was a man of ability and resources. If he 
had been appointed a few years earlier in the times of peace 
he might have quietly adjusted himself to the conditions; 
but, unfortunately, Spain and England, as a result of differ- 
ences centering in the West Indies, concluded to have a war, 
and Thomas was keen to support his royal master. The 
two men, Kinsey and Thomas, were pitted against each 
other as the leaders of the contest which was to follow. 
Whether we consider skill in disputations or in political 
management, the end of the struggle did not find the Quaker 
leader at any disadvantage. 

The contest began when, in October, 1739, Governor 
Thomas sent a message to the Assembly, suggesting that 
they make an appropriation to protect the province against 
attack and assist the king. The Assembly took the mat- 
ter into serious consideration, and explained in a some- 
what lengthy preface that they were all loyal subjects, lov- 
ers of religious liberty, and that one of the principal motives 
which had brought them and their ancestors to the Province 
was the full enjoyment of liberty of conscience which was 
granted to them by their great charter, and which the pro- 
prietor had pledged himself and his successors " according 
to the true intent and meaning thereof, should be kept and 
remain without any alterations inviolably forever." And 
then they add, " It is not unknown most of them were of 
the people called Quakers, and principaled against bearing 
arms in any case whatsoever." They admit that the cir- 
cumstances have changed, and that a great many who have 
come in since think it to be their duty to fight in defense of 
their country, families and estates. These also have the 
same right of liberty of conscience with themselves. They 
do not condemn the use of arms in others, but they ob- 



JOHN KINSEY 163 

ject to any law which would compel a man to bear arms 
against his conscience; and they add that a law which 
forces other people to bear arms and relieves the Quakers 
would be inconsistent and partial. Then they make a sug- 
gestion to the Governor, which, if he had been wise, he would 
have adopted and dropped the matter. They point out that 
the Charter gave him ample authority to raise a troop him- 
self, and that they did not propose to interfere with his ac- 
tions in this respect, provided he did not trample upon any- 
one's conscience. The clause of the Charter granting this 
authority, which William Penn accepted, it may be inter- 
esting to note : 

" To the Proprietor aforesaid, his Heirs and Assigns, by 
themselves or their Captains, or other of their Officers, to 
le\'y, muster, and train all sorts of Men of what Condition 
soever or wheresoever born in the said Province of Penn- 
sylvania for the time being, and to make Warr and to pur- 
sue the Enemies and Robbrs aforesaid as well by Sea as by 
Land, even without the Limits of the said Province, and by 
God's Assistance to vanquish and take them, and being 
taken to put them to Death by the Law of Warr, or to save 
them at their Pleasure; and to do all, and every other thing 
which unto the Charge and Oflfice of a Captain General of 
an Army belongeth, or hath accustomed to belong, as fully 
and freely as any Captain General of an Army hath ever 
had the same." 

They wound up their address by the pious reflection: 

" Not doubting but that Wee shall share in that Protec- 
tion Our Gracious Sovereign denys not even to the meanest 
of his Subjects; And having at the same time a due de- 
pendence on that Power which not only calms the raging 
Waves of the Sea, but sets Limits beyond which they can- 
not pass; And remembering the Words of the sacred Text, 
That * Except the Lord keep the City the Watchman waketh 
but in vain.' " 



1 64 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

We find in this paper several interesting indications of 
the state of feeling among Friends on the subject of war at 
this date. One was that they were unequivocally opposed 
to all war under all circumstances; another, that they had 
no words of condemnation for those who from good motives 
thought and acted differently, and thirdly, that if they did 
their duty their reliance was upon a divine Providence who 
would order the matter aright. 

The Governor was not disposed to recede from the con- 
test. In an epistle equally lengthy he called their attention 
to the fact that they were representatives of the whole 
people; that he had no right to look into their personal re- 
ligious persuasions, but that it was their duty as representa- 
tives to protect a rich Province from invaders. He did not 
wish to infringe any of their consciences, nor to introduce 
persecution, for he himself was a great friend of liberty. 
" But," he said, " as the world is now circumstanced, no 
purity of heart or set of religious principles will protect us 
from the enemy." The Assembly had recognized this in 
the institution of courts and juries. He told them that they 
would condemn " little rogues " to death for breaking into 
their houses and yet they would not use similar means on a 
larger scale for meeting the more organized attacks upon 
their property. He had not been unaware of the privileges 
granted to him by the Charter, and the very fact that Wil- 
liam Penn was willing to accept the powers of a Captain- 
General under this Charter indicated his opinions as to the 
necessity of bearing arms in defense of his government. 
Then he puts in a little attack at their trusting in Provi- 
dence and unwillingness to exert themselves. He says: 

" Every Man that acknowledges the Superintendence of 
one Supreme Being in the Affairs of the World, must be sen- 
sible that without His Blessing all we do will come to noth- 
ing; and yet we build, we plant, we sow, and we send Ships 



JOHN KINSEY 165 

to Sea, concluding that these are necessary means for 
accomplishing the Ends desired. But that we should do 
all these, and at the same time expect that God shall fight 
our Battles, without preparing ourselves the necessary 
means for our Defence, I confess can be no more recon- 
ciled to my understanding than that Because the Lord stills 
the raging Waves of the Sea, the Seaman may therefore 
leave the Sails of the Ship standing, and go to sleep in a 
storm; Or that Watchmen are therefore unnecessary, be- 
cause Except the Lord keep the City the Watchmen waketh 
but in vain." 

The Assembly returned to the attack, and article by ar- 
ticle, replied to the Governor's address. They showed that 
their position inland from the sea, protected by friendly 
colonies to the north, east and south, made them in no dan- 
ger of being attacked. Consequently the Governor's argu- 
ment for the need of defense had no bearing on the case. 
They will not admit the justice of the comparison between 
the " little rogue " and the " great invaders." Their argu- 
ment is this: 

" And yet it is Easy to discover the Difference between 
killing a Soldier, fighting (perhaps) in Obedience to the 
Commands of his Sovereign, and who may, possibly, think 
himself in the Discharge of his Duty, and executing a 
Burglar who broke into our House, plundered us of our 
Goods, and perhaps would have murdered too, if he could 
not otherwise have accomplished his Ends, who must know 
at the Time of the Commission of the Fact, It was a viola- 
tion of Laws human and divine, and that he thereby justly 
rendered himself obnoxious to the Punishment which en- 
sued." 

They would evidently have made a stronger case if their 
attitude toward capital punishment had permitted them to 
say something more of the sacredness of human life; but, 
having just enacted laws inflicting the penalty of death for 
burglary, rape, counterfeiting and other crimes, they could 



1 66 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

hardly say that they had any objection to the taking of life 
per se. They believe, however, that an Almighty Power 
does superintend the government of the world, and that He 
will protect the principles of religion which are agreeable to 
His will. As to William Penn's being a believer in war, they 
state, with some sarcasm, that they probably know as much 
about his opinions as the Governor does. They say, " he 
not only professed himself a Quaker, and wrote in their fa- 
vor, but particularly against war and fighting." As to the 
comparison between the preparation for storms at sea and 
harvests on land, and self-defense in the time of danger, 
their argument is: 

" By a law almost as old as the Creation, Building, Plant- 
ing, Sowing, and other parts of Agriculture became neces- 
sary for the Sustenance of Life ; And so to those who would 
traffick in Parts beyond the Seas, Ships and Seamen were 
requisite; the Nature of whose undertaking obliged them to 
Industry in discharge of their Duty as well as for their own 
Safety, and not attended with any Injury to others; But 
because we may lawfully build, plant, sow, or send Ships 
to Sea, or that because it is necessary for Seamen to take 
care of a Ship in a storm, that therefore it is not inconsist- 
ent with Christianity to defend ourselves at the Expense of 
the Lives of our Fellow-Creatures, tho' our Enemies, is not 
equally evident to us; And yet if others think the Argu- 
ments forcible, such have their Liberty." 

The Governor, in a couple of days, returned to the attack. 
He reproved them for their acrimony, which, he says, he 
little expected from men of their principles, and declares 
he will not engage in the discussion in that spirit. He 
thanks them sarcastically for their description of the geog- 
raphy of the Province, which he intimates he is not en- 
tirely imacquainted with. And then he again takes up the 
question of the burglar where he evidently thinks he has a 
point : 



JOHN KINSEY 167 

" If a Burglar acts contrary to the Laws of Christianity 
and of the land in breaking open your Houses, and by those 
Laws you are justified in putting him to Death; and if a 
soldier acts contrary to the Laws of Christianity (as he does 
according to your own principles) and the Laws of Nations, 
in plundering your Houses and murdering your Families, it 
will be difficult to shew why you may not as justly put the 
latter to Death as the former. The Will of the Prince, or 
the mistake of the Soldier, can have nothing to do in de- 
termining the moral Good or Evil of the Action." 

He points to their early appropriation of money for the 
King's use in manifest response to a demand for war funds, 
and admitting that he does not know very much about Wil- 
liam Penn's writings, he adds: 

" As Actions are the best Evidences of a Man's Thoughts, 
your first Proprietor's acceptance of a Military Charge, his 
devolving it upon his Lieutenants, and his Commission to 
a Person to command a Fort at Newcastle, which I have 
under his own Hand writing, are suflficient Proofs to me of 
his Opinion; and tho' I have a very high Regard for that 
Gentleman's character, render it altogether unnecessary to 
examine his Writings, if he has wrote on that subject." 

He replies in conclusion: 

" For I believe it will be still thought as little consistent 
with reason to expect we shall be protected from an enemy 
without preparing the necessary Means for Defence, as it 
would be to expect Grain without Sowing or Fruit without 
Planting, and so in other Instances." 

The Assembly contented itself with a general reply to 
this, stating that they had no delight in controversy; that 
they did not believe the Province was in danger; that the 
early appropriations of money for warlike purposes did not 
prove their utility ; that they were steadfastly loyal to King 
George, and that on the basis of these well-known principles 



168 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

had always enjoyed the protection of the Crown, and that 
the Province would receive no ill effects from their lack of 
legislation. 

In the main their argument was that fighting being im- 
moral in itself was very unlike the preparation for a storm 
at sea and that they could not do it even for a good cause. 

Then the Governor replies in a final argument, and asks 
the question which has never been answered: " If your prin- 
ciples will not allow you to pass a bill for establishing a 
militia, if they will not allow you to secure the navigation of 
a river by building a fort, if they will not allow you to pro- 
vide armies for the defence of the inhabitants, if they will 
not allow you to raise men for his Majesty's service for dis- 
tressing an insolent enemy, is it calumny to say your prin- 
ciples are inconsistent with the ends of government? " 

There was a veiled irony in many of the Assembly's replies 
which presumably came from the pen of John Kinsey, and 
which delighted the men who, in the coffee-houses of Phila- 
delphia, followed the controversy with great interest — as, 
for instance, when they said that the Province had pros- 
pered under the Quaker management before Governor 
Thomas had anything to do with it, and probably would 
in the future; " though some Governors have been as uneasy 
and as willing and as ready to find fault and suggest dan- 
gers as himself." Or again, as the election approached, " If 
we have committed any mistakes, the time draws near in 
which our constituents, if they think it necessary, may 
amend their choice, and the time also draws nigh in which 
your (councillors' and governor's) mistakes may be 
amended by a succeeding Governor. Permit us to con- 
gratulate our country on both." 

During the course of the controversy, parties were grad- 
ually forming, and this thrust and counterthrust of argu- 
ments were simply appeals to the constituents; for there 



JOHN KINSEY 169 

were no editorial comments in the scanty papers of those 
days by which public opinion was influenced. The argu- 
ments were passed around by word of mouth or by written 
manuscript, and in many a coffee house or country tavern, 
and doubtless also on the steps of the meeting houses after 
the assembly was dismissed, they were repeated and illus- 
trated with ever-increasing emphasis. 

That the Governor's threat to drive Friends from the As- 
sembly was not purely an empty one, is shown by a letter 
which he wrote to the English Government, considerably 
misrepresenting the situation, and recommending that all 
Quakers be made ineligible to official situations. This was 
intended to be private, but a friend of the Assembly got 
possession of it in England, and sent a copy to Philadelphia. 
Great was the wrath of the men who for half a century had 
felt themselves responsible for the conduct of affairs, and 
under whose management had developed the most thriving 
Province of the new world. 

The " Gentlemen's Party," which was the title that the 
Governor's friends took to themselves, also girded themselves 
for the contest, and in the fall election of 1742 there was 
a great street fight in Philadelphia, the actual participants 
of which were a number of sailors for the Gentlemen's Party 
and a bunch of hard-fisted Germans for the Quakers. It is 
unnecessary to add that the Quakers triumphed both in the 
street contest and at the polls, and rather increased than 
diminished their great majority in the Assembly. 

They also struck the Governor at another point. He was 
promised a salary by the Penns, whose agent he was, but 
this salary had to be voted by the Assembly. During the 
stringency of the contest the Assembly always forgot to place 
such an item in their appropriation bills, and for several 
years he nursed his wrath in poverty. But being now beaten 
at the polls, he showed signs of yielding. He signed a bill 



170 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

which he had hitherto opposed, and a little salary was 
granted him. He signed another and the Assembly began to 
feel still more generous. Finally he gave way altogether, 
and all his arrears were paid. He got along very pleasantly 
with the Assembly during the rest of his official career. He 
was completely tamed. 

The net results of the contest were a large increase of lib- 
erty for the people of Pennsylvania; the perfect mainte- 
nance of their anti-martial principles; the defeat of the 
Gentleman's Party at their own political game; the increas- 
ing strength among the people of the Quaker leaders in gov- 
ernment; the triumph of economy and simplicity in the 
management of public affairs. John Kinsey's letters, full 
on the one hand of pious reflection, and on the other, of 
adroit political argument, had carried the day. The " Coun- 
try Party," as his friends were generally called, had become 
supreme. One by one the claims of the proprietors — who 
were now farming Pennsylvania for what they could get 
from it, in a very different spirit from that of their high- 
minded father — were cut down. The possibility of gaining 
political ends without the sacrifice of principles was begin- 
ning to answer the taunt of Governor Thomas that their 
theories were inconsistent with government. In 1747 Ben- 
jamin Franklin writes of the Friends as " that wealthy and 
powerful body of people who have ever since the war gov- 
erned our elections and filled almost every seat in the As- 
sembly." Evidently they were good politicians, and the 
contest with the Governor had resulted in a strengthening of 
their lines. 

The Spanish War did not last long, but others came. The 
Governor used his authority as Captain-General to organ- 
ize a voluntary force said by Franklin to consist of 10,000 
men. On this the Assembly took no action. The Assembly 
frequently reminded the Governor that they were unable to 



JOHN KINSEY 171 

vote any money for warlike purposes, and personally would 
contribute nothing in the way of service, but that they were 
loyal subjects of the King and acknowledged their obliga- 
tions to aid in his government. The effect of this course was 
to save their fellow-members in the Province from compul- 
sory military service, and from direct war taxes. They 
thus shielded the consciences of sensitive Friends, preserved 
their charter from Court attack, broke down the worst evils 
of proprietary pretensions, and secured large additions of 
liberty. Whether or not the partial sacrifice of principle, 
if so it was, was too high a price for these advantages, was 
differently decided in those days, and will be to-day. An 
unbending course would have but hastened the inevitable 
crisis. 

Matters went on in this unsettled way through the re- 
maining years of John Kinsey's Speakership. The As- 
sembly would appropriate money " for the King's use " and 
the King through the Governor would use it for warlike 
purposes, as all taxes in all lands have been used. If there 
were a direct tax asked for a definite military purpose it 
would be refused. Up to 1750 the Friends under Kinsey's 
leadership were reasonably consistent. Afterwards the dif- 
ficulties increased and after 1756 they gave it up and re- 
fused membership in the Assembly. 

On the death of David Lloyd in 1731 the position of Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court was offered to Isaac Norris 
the elder who declined. James Logan was then appointed 
and he held the post till 1739. Jeremiah Langhorne fol- 
lowed him till 1743 when John Kinsey was appointed and 
with him the line of Quaker Chief Justices ended. There 
is so little one can glean from the records of the doings of 
any of these men in this capacity that the history of the 
court and the competency of the Justices is largely a matter 
of inference. Logan never had a serious legal education 



172 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

and probably this was not demanded by the times. Kinsey 
was a lawyer of great learning, skill and probity and the 
honor of the court doubtless did not suffer in his hands. 

During these years he performed other public services of 
value. The continuous discussion with Maryland over the 
Boundary Line developed finally into a " war." A militia 
captain and surveyor in the interests of Lord Baltimore and 
Governor Ogle drew around him a band of ruffians and in 
1730 made an invasion into York County driving out those 
who claimed allegiance to the Penn government. John Kin- 
sey and Samuel Preston were appointed Commissioners to 
visit the Governor, asking that hostilities cease and that a 
temporary arrangement as to citizenship should be made 
pending a permanent settlement. Some progress was made 
but the Maryland commissioner got Governor Ogle away 
from " the seductive influences of the Pennsylvania Com- 
mission," and he left town without notice. The Pennsylva- 
nians came home without accomplishing anything definite, 
but the " war " did not continue and the way was cleared for 
the future. 

Diu-ing the Speakership of John Kinsey a burning ques- 
tion was the issuance of Bills of Credit to be used as money. 
This was frowned upon by the Proprietors and by the Eng- 
lish government, but in a new country which imported so 
much more than it exported, the gold and silver were drained 
and the people had to resort to barter, to their great incon- 
venience. To meet this difficulty the Assembly had author- 
ized loans upon land and plate of ample security and upon 
this the bills had been issued. They never depreciated and 
this could probably be said of the paper money of no other 
colony. The land was rising in value and when orders 
came to call in the bills and Governor Thomas presented 
the directions to a special session of the Assembly there was 
universal disapproval. They refused to withdraw the bills 



JOHN KINSEY 173 

already out and insisted on reissuing them when matured. 
To issue such bills was the popular method of raising 
revenue for the Province, and tho in general this was a dan- 
gerous policy, it was so carefully guarded that it worked 
well in Pennsylvania. John Kinsey was the great defender 
of the issue and was for a long time a Trustee of the Loan 
Office which had charge of it. 

His contest in this matter and his efforts to avert war, 
made him popular in the province, not only among the 
Friends and their close supporters but also among the great 
mass of German voters. In a community with only a few 
Friends these voters would often select one as their repre- 
sentative and the Friends always had a three-fourths ma- 
jority in the legislature. In 1741 in the midst of the con- 
troversy with Governor Thomas, a serious effort was made 
to divert these German voters from the Quaker alliance. 
Conrad Weiser the Indian interpreter, a man of great and 
deserved influence among them, wrote a serious address 
telling them how deficient the Friends were in their "render- 
ing tribute to Caesar " and asked them to send in men who 
would do as the Governor wanted. The letter was widely 
circulated but Kinsey's hold was unshaken and the Ger- 
mans stood faithfully by their old friends. 

The dispute between the Governor, representing the Pro- 
prietors, and the Assembly became in time very complicated. 
The Governor wanted money for war with the French and 
Indians. The Assembly refused. He wanted any money 
" for the King's use " raised by taxes. They demanded 
Bills of Credit. He wanted the Proprietors' property ex- 
cluded from all taxation. They insisted that such property 
should stand with others. He wanted his salary. They de- 
clined to vote it while he was unsatisfactory to them. They 
demanded a knowledge of his instructions for they were 
tired of working in the dark. He declined to show them. 



174 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

They wanted to have complete political rights even though 
they would not swear or fight. He insisted that such prin- 
ciples were subversive of government. They demanded 
pay to the masters for the indentured servants who had 
joined the militia without serving their full time. He 
balked seriously at the suggestion. Through this complex 
maze of difficult problems, John Kinsey steered his party 
wisely, unitedly and victoriously. 

John Kinsey had his share in making the honorable his- 
tory of the treatment of the Indians by the Friends of Penn- 
sylvania. The days of trustfulness by the red men were 
over. They had seen too much of the vices and greed of 
the settlers to repose entire confidence in them. They had 
learned too that there were two tribes of white men, the 
French and the English who were eagerly bidding for their 
friendship. They were inclined to keep peace with their 
neighbors of the Province and good treatment would cement 
this inclination into an indissoluble bond. The Quaker 
Assembly voted willingly large appropriations for Indian 
presents. It meant also not to allow settlers on their lands, 
and to keep fire-water from them. But the Penns and the 
Governor wanted their land for sale to settlers and cheated 
and debauched the Indians to secure some infamous titles. 
The iniciuitous " Walking Purchase " of 1737 and the en- 
forced banishment of the Minisink Indians from their an- 
cestral home in the " Forks of the Delaware " gave a very 
ugly complexion to Indian attitude. Had the Quaker As- 
sembly had their way, the desolating wars preceding the 
Revolution would have almost certainly been avoided and 
the seventy years of peace been extended by twenty more. 

It would have been better for the Indians if a white man 
had never set foot upon the Province. Their conversion to 
Christianity, which had been cherished by Penn and his 
friends as a solution of the race question had practically 



JOHN KINSEY 175 

been abandoned. It was better to feed them than to fight 
them but white avarice and white disease were fast demor- 
alizing them. They had not learned to take kindly to reser- 
vations, and were powerless against the oncoming flood of 
settlers. The Quaker policy would have purchased their 
land piecemeal in advance of occupation, and paid them 
enough to satisfy them, or if they refused to sell would have 
kept the whites off the land. But the land belonged to the 
Proprietors, who had none of the broad-minded philan- 
thropy of their father, and it was necessary to patch up the 
holes made by their short-sighted diplomacy in the Indian 
relations. 

Their arrangements had been almost wholly with the 
Algonquin tribes of the Province. But about the time of 
John Kinsey's prominence it became evident that the Iro- 
quois of New York were to become a factor in affairs. They 
claimed the sovereignty over the Pennsylvania Indians, 
were sworn friends of the whites and had resisted both the 
force and the bribes of the French. They had saved New 
York from an invasion from Canada, and all the colonies 
looked upon them with hope as a bulwark against French 
aggression. They must be liberally supplied with every- 
thing the Indian heart could desire. Conrad Weiser and the 
Governor hoped also that they could be persuaded to take 
French scalps in the lake region. 

The first part of the policy was acceptable to the As- 
sembly but they would not countenance war measures. In 
response to a request to furnish funds the Assembly replied : 
" The Governor must be sensible that men of our peace- 
able principles cannot consistently therewith join in per- 
suading the Indians to engage in the war. If it be thought 
there be any real danger of the Indians deserting the British 
interests and going over to the French, and that to preserve 
them steady in their friendship further presents are neces- 



176 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

sary to secure them in their fidelity to the Crown of Great 
Britain and amity with the inhabitants of this and the 
neighboring Colonies, and the Governor can think his health 
and business will permit his negotiating this affair in per- 
son, we shall be willing to pay the expense to arise by it. 

" John Kinsey, Speaker. 
"Fourth month 24th, 1746." 

The Governor however preferred to send a conmiission to 
Albany, with John Kinsey at its head, to join with agents of 
the other colonies in arranging matters with the Six Nations. 
The New Englanders who felt the brunt of French aggres- 
sion wanted to force the Iroquois to abandon their role of 
friendly passivity for active warfare and in this they were 
encouraged by Conrad Weiser who had gone along as in- 
terpreter. New York was undecided and Pennsylvania 
actively hostile to this policy. John Kinsey argued that 
Pennsylvania had no interest in a war and would not sanc- 
tion one unless the legislature acted favorably upon it; 
that such a war would open hostilities upon all the colonies ; 
that other Indian tribes would be drawn in on one side or 
the other; that if the Six Nations were persuaded to go to 
war by white influence it would be cowardly to desert them, 
and it was quite uncertain what the legislatures would do. 
New York seems to have been won by these arguments and 
a divided conference did nothing, which is what John Kin- 
sey desired. He probably averted a general war, or rather 
postponed it for a decade. 

John Kinsey's useful life ended suddenly on May 12th, 
1750, at the age of 57. He had gone to Burlington, his old 
home, to plead in court and was there seized with a stroke 
of apoplexy which carried him off in a few hours. 

In John Smith's Journal we find this reference: " The loss 
of this great and good man occasions a general lamentation 



JOHN KINSEY 177 

and to present appearances is irrepairable." In a private 
letter James Pemberton writes : " John Kinsey was a person 
of no small consequence to this province, being our Chief 
Justice, Speaker of the Assembly and in many other public 
posts, in all of which he acquitted himself with an unblem- 
ished character, of great skill in the law, and was of great 
account in the Society, being a person of extensive capacity 
and completely qualified for a serviceful man. To the ir- 
reparable loss of the province he died in Burlington in the 
midst of a cause he was there pleading. He acquired a 
great share of credit during our contest some time ago 
with Governor Thomas." These were the views of Friends, 
-and in Franklin's Gazette of May 17th, we have the follow- 
ing: 

" Friday last died suddenly in Burlington in New Jersey, 
the Honorable John Kinsey, Esquire, Chief Justice of the 
Province and Speaker of the General Assembly. His long 
experience and great ability in the management of public 
affairs, his skill in the laws and his unblemished integrity 
as a Judge, made his life a very valuable and useful one. 
His death is therefore justly lamented as a general loss." 

The Pennsylvania Journal gives a more extended notice: 

" On Friday last died in an apoplectic fit at Burlington in 
the Colony of New Jersey that truly great man John Kinsey, 
Esquire, of this city, the place of his birth, and was de- 
cently interred here on Sunday last. Upon the death of his 
father who was Speaker of the House of Representatives of 
that Colony, he was though young chosen a member and 
Speaker of the House, where he sat from his first election 
till the dissolution of the Assembly which happened some 
years after his coming to reside in this place; when the 
people there very much regretted that a law of the Colony 
disabled persons not inhabitants from representing them. 
But his great abilities and unshaken integrity were so con- 
spicuous that the freemen of this county at the first election 
after the removal of his family hither made choice of him 



178 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

as one of the representatives in the General Assembly of 
this province and continued him during his life. He would 
have been immediately chosen Speaker of our honorable 
house but that the chair was then filled by a gentleman of 
like abilities and public spirit whom they could not over- 
look. But that patriot in the year 1738 declining to sit 
longer in the house and resigning his trust of Public Com- 
missioner in the Loan Office, Mr. Kinsey was fixed upon as 
the most proper person to succeed him in both stations in 
which he continued to the time of his decease. He was the 
Corypheus of law in this and adjacent provinces, sometimes 
Attorney General, and in April 1743 to the great joy of the 
people made Chief Justice of the province and has ever since 
sat in the Supreme Court with unrivaled reputation; and 
indeed would have filled with honor the first seat of Justice 
even in England. His death gave a universal shock to the 
people. We may without attempting a particular delin- 
eation of his character justly apply to him what was said 
of the great and good Sir Matthew Hale in last century, 
whose spirit he much admired. ' He was one of the greatest 
patterns this age has afforded whether in his private de- 
portment as a Christian, or in his public employments as a 
lawyer. Senator, judge or treasurer.' So that what Horace 
said of his friend Quintilius will with propriety close the 
article concerning our late public friend: ' Omnibus ille 
bonis flebilis occidit.' " 



When John Kinsey died the days of real Quaker control 
of the government ended. The Legislature remained theirs 
for six years longer and could have so continued had they 
not insisted on resigning when the Governor declared war on 
the Indians. But they had no leader who combined the ab- 
solute confidence of the meeting with the capacity to mould 
public opinion and give wise judgment on public affairs. 
The "Quaker Party " fell largely into the hands of Benjamin 
Franklin who had sympathy with their demands for politi- 
cal freedom, but none for their non-military spirit. Their 
counsels became divided. The successor to John Kinsey as 



JOHN KINSEY 179 

Speaker, Isaac Norris, 2nd, perhaps equally able and 
trusted as a statesman, was more on the fringe of meeting 
activities. The more strict churchmen were having an in- 
creasing distrust of the influences of public life and a rift 
developed between the political and ecclesiastical Quakers 
which made united action difficult. Whether John Kinsey 
had he lived would have been able to guide Friendly activ- 
ities in politics in harmony with conscientious Quakerism, 
is a matter of speculation. But he must be regarded as the 
last great Quaker political leader. 

There is not much to guide us in forming a judgment of 
the man apart from his external activities. Like the other 
great Quaker Chief Justice David Lloyd he left very little 
in the way of memoranda or letters by which to judge the 
man. Unlike him however he seems to have made no ene- 
mies and been open to no damaging charges. He belonged 
to the social circle in Philadelphia, consisting of the Logans, 
the Norrises, the Pembertons, the Morrises and others who 
combined broad intellectual sympathies, with keen business 
instincts and honest interest in the affairs of state, who 
were the best group of citizens of the city and most active 
in all its developments. How much he was esteemed by 
these is evident from many little references, but by very 
few direct allusions. 

His home after 1735 was " Plantation," an estate of 23 
acres fronting the Schuylkill on the east side near Grays 
Ferry, the site of the present U. S. Naval Hospital. Here 
he retired when his many duties permitted. About two 
years before his death, his son John, a youth of great prom- 
ise, was killed by the accidental discharge of a gun when on 
a hunting trip for ducks on the Schuylkill. This greatly 
saddened his last years. 

The minute of the monthly meeting of Philadelphia may 
conclude this sketch. 



1 80 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

" John Kinsey was born in this city about the year 1693. 
Being endowed with a superior natural capacity and under- 
standing, he applied himself to the study of the law and 
became eminent in that profession and distinguished himself 
in several public stations in this and the adjacent govern- 
ment (New Jersey) by his integrity, candour and regard to 
truth and justice, being of an agreeable disposition, easy of 
access and free to communicate his knowledge for relief of 
the distressed though engaged in a multiplicity of business. 
He was remarkably useful and acquired a general good 
character, and great respect among people of all ranks. In 
his younger years he was signally visited by the power of 
truth, by which he was drawn off from the vanities and fol- 
lies of the world and became serviceable in the church on 
various accounts. His death was sudden and much la- 
mented, being seized by an apoplectic fit, during the sitting 
of a court at Burlington, and departed in a few hours. His 
corpse was brought to his own home in this city, and from 
thence attended by a great number of people of the sev- 
eral denominations to our great Meeting House and after 
to the grave yard on the 13th of 3d mo: 1750 in the 57th 
year of his age, having been Chief Justice of this province 
the last seven years of his life." 



ISAAC NORRIS, 2nd 

No one probably stood higher in general esteem and trust 
during the first quarter of the 18th century in the province 
of Pennsylvania than Isaac Norris the elder. He was the 
son of Thomas Norris, or Norrice, a London merchant who 
joined Friends very early in their history, and was born in 
London on July 26th, 167L The family emigrated to 
Jamaica about 1678. In 1692 Isaac Norris went to Phila- 
delphia probably on business, as there was a large trade de- 
veloping between Penn's new province and the West Indies. 
Wliile absent a terrible earthquake shook Port Royal to the 
ground and all the remaining members of the family were 
immediately killed or so hurt that death shortly followed. 
About all that was saved of the property was a large silver 
dish found floating in the harbor in a cradle which also con- 
tained a negro child, the daughter of a slave who had died 
in heroic attempts to save his master. 

When he returned to the ruins of his home and had buried 
a brother and sister who had survived the immediate shock, 
he concluded to leave the stricken island for Philadelphia. 
In 1893 with about £100, all that was left of a flourishing 
business, a young man of about 21, without near relatives or 
influential friends he entered into business in Penn's City. 

He was strikingly successful. The conditions of the 
times afforded an excellent chance for commercial success. 
The triangular exchange of goods between Pennsylvania, 
the West Indies and England brought large gains and he 
was in a condition from previous experience and capacity 
to profit largely. James Logan calls him " a trader," which 



1 82 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

probably meant a shrewd and successful man of affairs. 
James Logan also says of him, " I value his judgment far 
above any man's in this government (except Samuel Carpen- 
ter) and he is one of the most excellent of men." In a little 
time he was one of the wealthiest merchants of the province. 
William Penn, Jr. had received as a gift from his father a 
manor on Schuylkill containing 7000 acres. Isaac Norris 
and William Trent, the founder of Trenton, bought him out 
and Norris soon after purchased Trent's share. This in- 
cluded the present Norristown. He also bought several 
hundred acres in the Northern Liberties of Philadelphia on 
which he built Fair Hill, for the times a residence of consid- 
erable pretensions. Pastorius speaks admiringly of it. It 
is interesting also to read the description of the colonial 
country seat, by Deborah Logan, a granddaughter of Isaac 
Norris, giving as it does the life of a wealthy Quaker family. 

" Fairhill built by Isaac Norris upon the same plan as 
Dolobran (a seat from long antiquity possessed by the 
Lloyd family in Montgomeryshire, North Wales) , at least 
as to the ground floor, was finished in 1717, and was at that 
time the most beautiful seat in Pennsylvania. The sashes 
for the windows and much of the best work were imported 
from England. The entrance was into a hall, paved with 
black and white marble, two large parlors on each side, and 
an excellent staircase, well lighted. The courts and gardens 
were in the taste of those times, with gravel walks and 
parterres. Many lofty trees were preserved round the 
house, which added greatly to its beauty, and, at the time 
of my remembrance, the outbuildings were covered with fes- 
toons of ivy and scarlet bignonia. Isaac Norris had been 
very prosperous in trade, which at that period offered un- 
common facilities. His son Isaac Norris the Speaker suc- 
ceeded his father in the possession of Fairhill, as he did in 
his talents, abilities, and public usefulness. As he was 
learned and fond of literature, he collected together a very 
good and extensive library. It was placed in a low build- 
ing, consisting of several rooms, in the garden, and was a 



ISAAC NORRIS, 2ND 183 

most delightful retreat for contemplative study; the win- 
dows curtained with ivy ; the sound of ' bees industrious 
murmur ' from a glass hive which had communication from 
without, and where their wonderful instinct could be viewed. 
Beautiful specimens of the fine arts and many curiosities 
were also collected there, the shelves were filled with the 
best authors, and materials for writing and drawing at 
hand. In this place Isaac Norris the Speaker spent all the 
time that his health would permit which was not devoted 
to public business." ^ 

Isaac Norris also owned the Slate Roof House, in which 
William Penn resided from 1699 to 1701. It was situated 
on the east side of Second Street below Chestnut. He was 
one of three or four Philadelphians who owned a coach. 
On it the coat of arms of the family was blazoned. 

His standing if not his fortune was improved by his mar- 
riage with Mary the third daughter of Thomas Lloyd the 
Deputy-Governor and Penn's trusted friend. They had 14 
children, four of whom died in infancy. 

He was for many years a member of the Assembly. In 
politics he sided wholly with the Proprietor and James 
Logan, though in such a reasonable way as not to bring 
upon himself much of the personal opposition which the 
more pugnacious Logan had to bear. He was one of Wil- 
liam Penn's most trusted and sagacious advisers, and along 

1 An interesting little piece of by-play is seen in the following 
minute of Fair Hill meeting with the good natured sarcasm of 
Isaac Norris's comment. He had proposed an exchange of land 
with the meeting property and the committee reported : 

"The Friends appointed to view Fair Hill lands report that 
they have viewed it and considered the proposal made bj' I. N. 
of exchanging a piece of Friends lands there, with him, for the 
like quantity of his which they conceive will not be of advantage 
to this meeting." To which Isaac Norris added, 

"Because if Isaac Norris keeps his land between German road 
and the Meeting House always open as he may probably do rather 
than shut up the way, this meeting will save their own land and 
get all the use of his for nothing." 



1 84 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

with Samuel Carpenter, Caleb Pusey, Richard Hill and a 
few others was appealed to in all diflficult matters as a wise 
counsellor. In 1706 he went to England and spent two 
years. Penn was at this time in the thick of his difl&culties 
with the grasping family of Fords which had stripped him of 
many thousand pounds. His comment on Penn's business 
methods is interesting. " But the strange infatuation that 
should lead a man never to show this (Penn's account with 
the Fords) to any friend whatsoever before he had so 
clinched and closed it, is not to be paralleled nor exceeded in 
a man of his sense otherwise." 

Isaac Norris untangled the medley, brought matters to 
a settlement which ultimately relieved Penn of the diffi- 
culty, and also disproved some of the adverse stories which 
David Lloyd was then circulating among the unfriends of 
the Proprietor. 

He was Mayor of the city. Presiding Judge of the Court 
of Common Pleas and a member for about 30 years of the 
Governor's Council. On the death of David Lloyd in 1731 
he was offered the Chief Justiceship but declined. 

He was attorney for William Penn to sell lands and later 
for his widow, and was also one of the Trustees named by 
Penn in his will. 

He died in 1735 in his 65th year as the result of an apo- 
plectic stroke in Germantown Friends Meeting. 

Isaac Norris first appears on the meeting records when he 
asked for permission in 1694 to marry Mary Lloyd. What 
happened at the wedding is not very evident but there ap- 
pears to have been some " acclamations " the report of which 
the Keith party sent over to England as a complaint against 
Friends. George Whitehead, a prominent English Friend 
who seems on various occasions to have antagonized Wil- 
liam Penn and his friends, asked an explanation. But the 
meeting cleared the parties involved of all blame. Isaac 



ISAAC NORRIS, 2ND 185 

Norris then rapidly rose in meeting importance, his clear 
head and wisely conciliatory methods finding a large place 
for him. Whenever a paper was to be prepared or a judg- 
ment passed on the orthodoxy of a writing or an important 
piece of business to be attended to, he was on the committee. 
Throughout his life he was a trusted and consistent Friend. 
Like other friends of Penn and Logan he was rather less 
strenuous in his anti-martial views than David Lloyd. 
When on the occasion of that agitator's downfall in 1710 
Isaac Norris became the practical leader of the Assembly, 
that body voted £2000 " to the Queen's use " without re- 
strictions, with the argument that the way it was spent was 
her matter not theirs. This set the standard for the Quaker 
attitude in the legislature on requests for grants of money 
for suspicious purposes through the colonial days. 

He was a man of good education, though how he re- 
ceived it does not appear. He knew enough Latin to make 
frequent use of it, and his letters show a good English style, 
far better than the hastily written composition of William 
Penn. He had varied interests which were reflected in the 
library which he collected at Fair Hill to which his son 
made extensive additions. After the province got through 
the turbulent days of infancy a fairly healthy and solid 
intellectual life arose in the colony of which the names men- 
tioned in this volume are all good representatives. Neither 
their state nor church activities were permitted to take all 
their time or energy, and their early retirement from busi- 
ness with moderate fortunes gave them the leisure for read- 
ing and profitable intercourse. The new English books 
were early purchased and the standard authors in various 
languages carefully read. Without a college they had the 
advantage of a serious interest in the best literature by 
which they were efficiently educated. 

The son of Isaac Norris, the grandson of Thomas Lloyd, 



186 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

and the son-in-law of James Logan could not well be other- 
wise than an active Quaker politician. That he was al- 
ways influential and after the death of Logan and Kinsey 
the undoubted leader of the party in the Assembly and the 
Province is a mild statement of his prominence. Politi- 
cally no one but Franklin had any considerable share in 
this leadership and Franklin not being in sympathy with 
Friends on certain points could not carry the general re- 
spect felt for Isaac Norris, 2nd — "The Speaker," — as he 
is usually designated to distinguish him from his father. 

He was born in 1701 the sixth in the family. The home 
of his early life was the " Slate Roof House," and as the 
oldest son at the time of his father's death he inherited Fair 
Hill. Here late in life he brought Sarah, the daughter of 
James Logan, to be his wife. 

His first public office was in 1727 when 26 years old he 
became a member of the City Council. Three years later 
he was made magistrate and in 1734 a few months before 
his father's death, he became a member of the Assembly of 
the Province. The division between parties had now shifted 
from the days of David Lloyd. William Penn and his wife 
were both dead and his sons were becoming unsympathetic 
in their attitude to Friends. Besides, the immigration of 
non-Quakers was creating a condition that forbade disunion 
in their ranks. So while the elder Isaac Norris was a strong 
adherent of the Proprietors the son immediately cast in his 
lot with the liberty party, whose opposition to the Propri- 
etors and their Episcopalian adherents was beginning to 
develop. The lines however in these early days were not 
hardly drawn and for a few years under the leadership of 
the Speaker Andrew Hamilton there was a good degree of 
harmony. When John Kinsey succeeded Hamilton in 1739 
and the question of peace and war was added to the differ- 
ences about secret instructions, the taxation of the Penn 



ISAAC NORRIS, 2ND 187 

lands, the issue of paper money and other economic ques- 
tions, the contest became more virulent. 

Isaac Norris, 2nd had gained his large place in public es- 
timation partly by his family connections and character, 
and partly by his mercantile experience, which made him an 
authority on all matters of trade. After his first election 
he was made chairman of a committee to make a report on 
the resources of Pennsylvania to be sent to England. This 
was a valuable and comprehensive statement and attracted 
attention to the young Assemblyman. 

When John Kinsey was made Speaker in 1739 Norris be- 
came his chief assistant and as we have seen in the sketch 
of the former, the great controversy between the Deputy 
Governor and the House on the question of appropriations 
for war and the right of peace loving men to have their con- 
sciences respected became acute. Feelings were embittered 
and politics ran riot. In 1741 the " Norris party " as the 
Friendly connection was often called was defeated in the 
city, and the Friends after this never regained the control 
of the city government. It was a different matter however 
to defeat Norris in Philadelphia (now Montgomery) County, 
yet it was very important to do so if the Governor was to 
control the situation. In " the bloody election of 1742 " a 
serious riot occurred, the facts concerning which were about 
as follows: 

The opponent of Norris was the wealthy William Allen 
then Recorder of the city and as such responsible in part 
for the conduct of the election. The German voters in 
gratitude for the liberal treatment they had received, and 
their freedom from military service and heavy taxes were 
invincibly friendly to the Quaker candidates and the oppo- 
sition claimed that unnaturalized Germans had been voted. 
On the morning of election day some 70 sailors in the inter- 
est of Allen armed with clubs gathered around the polls and 



188 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNS1.T.VANIA 

when the Recorder was appealed to to keep the peace his 
reply was " They have as good a right to be there as the 
unnaturalized Dutchmen." Very little effort was made 
to prevent a riot and the riot came. Men were knocked 
down around the polling place and the sailors for a time held 
possession. Reputable citizens like Israel Pemberton were 
rudely treated, and a reaction of public feeling probably 
aided the Norris party. When the roughs were driven away 
and the election was allowed to proceed, Norris was chosen 
by a considerable majority. The Assembly took ample tes- 
timony and without avail urged the city authorities to 
punish the rioters. 

The Assembly at this time was opposing the Governor, 
who as agent for the Penns was endeavoring to acquire by 
fair means or otherwise the right to settle all parts of the 
province. It had been bought of the Indians piecemeal 
and the rapid immigration of the peaceful years from 1710 
to 1740 had effected the sale of much of the lands already 
purchased. Hence it was desired to secure more from the 
Indians, for the Assembly insisted, so far as lay in their 
power, that purchase must precede settlement. The trick 
of the " Walking Purchase " by which a sort of title was 
had for lands lying between the Delaware and Lehigh Riv- 
ers had alienated the Pennsylvania Indians, and the Iro- 
quois of New York who claimed a kind of sovereignty over 
them were called in to move them out of the way to the 
banks of the Susquehanna. 

In a noted Council held in Philadelphia in 1742, the chiefs 
of the Five Nations professed to make a judicial examina- 
tion of the title deeds and to decide the question of rights. 
They had always been friendly with the English as against 
the French, but now having established their claims to 
recompense, word came to Philadelphia that they had also 
been treating with the French in Canada, and that their 



ISAAC NORRIS, 2ND 189 

future allegiance must be secured by presents and new treat- 
ies. It was also hoped that they could be induced to take up 
arms against the French. A general conference was therefore 
called to be held at Albany in 1745 to be attended by dele- 
gates from New England, New York and Pennsylvania, and 
Thomas Lawrence of the Governor's Council, John Kinsey 
the Speaker and Isaac Norris were the Pennsylvania dele- 
gates. Norris kept a journal of his trip to Albany, now in 
print.^ The results of the conference have already been 
given. Kinsey and Norris were in close accord. Their 
Quaker ideas kept them from removing their hats in the 
presence of the Governor of New York, which he demanded, 
and they therefore remained outside several of the con- 
ferences doing their work, probably none the less effectively, 
in private meetings with the Indian chiefs. They gave lib- 
eral presents at parting and Brother Onas again stood well 
with the Indians. The Iroquois were persuaded not to take 
up the hatchet on either side and war was averted. 

In 1751 Norris succeeded John Kinsey as Speaker of the 
Assembly, a post which he held till nearly his death. It 
was a result of his 30 years' service in this legislative body 
that his fame as a statesman must rest. It is safe to say 
that during this time no important measure went through 
without having strongly felt his impress. During the early 
years he was most intimately associated with Kinsey and 
during his late years with Franklin, but always his strong 
individuality stood out. No one but must respect his stern 
integrity, his capable management and his high ideals of 
independence in public service. His frequent election was 
compromised by no self seeking schemes, but his attitude 
simply was, that his time and abilities were at the service 
of the state, if they were needed and desired. The voters 
responded, placing him usually at the head of the poll. 
» Pennsylvania Magazine, Vol. 27, p. 20. 



190 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Up to 1729 the Assembly had met in a hired private 
house or occasionally in the Friends Meeting House. In 
that year an act was passed authorizing a commission of 
which the Speaker of the Assembly was chairman to con- 
struct a house and two thousand pounds was appropriated 
for the purpose. Differences arose as to the location and 
plans and nothing was done till 1732. Finally the State 
House, the fine chaste central building we now see, was 
adopted and construction was started. To Andrew Ham- 
ilton belongs the credit as architect and overseer of the 
erection. But he had to bear much criticism, and had spent 
some of his own money and on Jan. 18th, 1734 he asked to 
be discharged from further responsibility. 

This does not seem to have been granted and two years 
later he secured the two lots, one on the corner of 5th and 
Chestnut and the other at the corner of 6th and Chestnut, 
which he transferred respectively to the city and county 
of Philadelphia for courts and other public uses. Upon 
these lots at a later date the two corner buildings fronting 
on Chestnut Street were placed. 

In 1738 Andrew Hamilton rendered his final account 
showing the expenditures upon the State House proper and 
the land on which it stood to be £4446. 
y^n 1751 when Norris became Speaker he thought it neces- 
sary to crown the structure with a bell. In ordering from 
England his instructions were, " Let the bell be cast by the 
best workmen and examined carefully before it is shipped 
with the following words well-shaped in large letters round 
it; viz.: ' By order of the Assembly of the Province of Penn- 
sylvania, for the State House in the city of Philadelphia, 
1752,' and underneath ' Proclaim Liberty throughout the 
land, unto all the inhabitants thereof. Levit. XXV: 10.'" 
The bell imported was cracked in the trial ringing and re- 
cast in Philadelphia. Isaac Norris said, "they have made 



ISAAC NORRIS, 2ND 191 

a good bell which pleases me much that we should first 
venture upon and succeed in the greatest bell for aught I 
know in English America — surpassing too the imported 
one which is too high and brittle — the weight was 2080 
lbs." 

When Isaac Norris directed the inscription he could 
hardly have foreseen its prophetic character, but it was 
rung immediately after the reading of the Declaration of 
Independence in 1776 and the " Liberty Bell " is the most 
cherished relic of American history. / 

Isaac Norris was appointed to another Albany treaty with 
the Indians in 1754. The commission consisted of John 
Penn and Richard Peters representing the Proprietors, and 
Benjamin Franklin and himself the Assembly. Indian re- 
lations were becoming difficult. The Five Nations still 
claimed the right to the ownership of Pennsylvania and in- 
sisted that no sale of land by the Delawares was permis- 
sible. In an evil hour the government of Pennsylvania 
recognized this claim and this Albany meeting was for the 
purpose of effecting a purchase. By methods which were 
more or less unfair, taking advantage of the Indian igno- 
rance of geography, they bought for £400 all of south- 
western Pennsylvania. When the Delawares found that 
their land had been sold without their consent, they threw 
off the Iroquois yoke, joined the French, defeated Brad- 
dock's army a year later and for the first time in the history 
of the Colony the horrors of Indian warfare were known on 
the frontiers. What part Isaac Norris had in framing this 
treaty may not be known. Primarily it was the work of 
the agents of the Proprietors who wished to sell their lands. 
His own attitude had always been so fair and friendly to 
the Indians that it is hard to believe that he was actively 
interested in the proceedings. But there are indications 
that his relations with Friends were less close in his later 
years. 



192 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANLA 

It was on this expedition that Franklin presented to his 
fellow delegates his plan for a union of the Colonies, of 
course in subordination to the English Crown which was a 
precursor of the final union in Revolutionary days. Sixty 
years earlier William Penn had proposed a somewhat simi- 
lar scheme. 

The war came, French intrigue and the unwisdom of the 
Executive branch of the government of the Province drove 
the Indians, who for seventy-three years had been friendly, 
into the warpath. Cries came in from the frontiers of home- 
steads burnt, men shot at their plows, w^omen and children 
scalped or carried into horrible captivity and a growing 
sentiment among the red men that the French were the 
stronger and that the English were to be driven into the 
sea. 

For the past ten years while this state of affairs had 
been preparing the Quaker Assembly under Norris's leader- 
ship had adopted a definite course. The wisdom of appro- 
priations had been complicated by the efforts of the Penns 
to avoid their fair share of taxes on their unsold lands, and 
by their attempt to diminish the powers of the Assembly in 
the matter of appropriating and expending public money. 
But in the matter of military defense the Assembly had 
practically said, " We will not violate our consciences, or 
ask our constituents to do so by laws enforcing military 
service. We will not require citizens who are not con- 
scientious to perform the service for us. But we recognize 
that we are the servants of the province and not of a sect, 
and when men voluntarily form companies for defence we 
will supply the needed money." So they voted taxes " for 
the king's use " whenever the defense of their rights per- 
mitted with a not illiberal hand. They equipped and fed 
voluntary militia. They built a chain of forts to fence off 
the Indian territory. They voted supplies to Braddock's 



ISAAC NORRIS, 2ND 193 

army. In this policy they were supported by the Province 
and year after year were elected by large majorities. 

In the spring of 1756 the Governor and Council declared 
war against the Delaware and Shawnese Indians. The As- 
sembly was asked to appropriate money. This brought 
matters to a crisis. The more conservative Friends had 
been inclined for some time to question the consistency of 
war taxes with their professions of peace and in 1755 a 
number refused to pay them, suffering distraint of goods. 
A Quaker Assembly imposing taxes against which the 
Quaker conscience revolted was an unedifying spectacle. 

Matters were brought to a head by a bill introduced into 
the British Parliament to require an oath of allegiance of 
all members of colonial legislatures. This was especially 
aimed at the Philadelphia Friends, and would have driven 
them all out of office. To avert this result certain English 
Friends agreed to advise the retirement, at least temporary, 
of enough members of the meeting to give the non-members 
a majority and sent over two delegates to urge this view 
upon the colonists. Prior to their arrival six members led 
by James Pemberton had resigned. A number of others 
declined reelection in the fall of 1756 and the meeting 
authorities did their best to induce such as had been elected 
also to withdraw. 

In the fall of 1755 just after the Braddock defeat while 
the war was still raging on the frontiers the Province had 
elected out of an Assembly of 36 members, 26 Friends. As 
a result of the self-effacing efforts but twelve members were 
left after the election of 1756. These however contained 
two distinguished leaders. George Ashbridge had been 
sent up by Chester County continuously since 1743. When 
the committee of his Monthly Meeting tried to show the 
impropriety of his retaining his post, the only report they 
could make of his attitude was " He do not feel himself 



194 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

culpable." He held his place till his death in 1773, the 
undoubted choice of his constituents for thirty years. 

The other was Isaac Norris. He also declined to resign. 
The two delegates from England had personal interviews 
with all Friends in the Assembly. " They first waited on 
the Speaker Isaac Norris and if they could have prevailed 
with him to decline it would have the desired efifect on the 
others now remaining but they had no effect further than 
that he approved of what the others did.^ " He had been in 
the Assembly for twenty-two years and was to remain eight 
more. It is quite probable that though he was in the main 
a loyal Friend, he did not seriously disapprove of the meas- 
ures taken to defend the Province from the French and 
Indians and he knew the value of his leadership. He prob- 
ably saw the need of the break-up of the Quaker majority 
and now that was secured preferred to continue his useful 
services as Speaker. James Pemberton writes in another 
letter in 1765 "It is with some reluctance several of us enter 
again into this service the disposition of our Speaker whose 
conduct you can not in all respects approve renders the task 
the more disagreeable." 

The influence of Norris is strikingly shown in a pamphlet 
printed in 1758, the author unknown, called The Chronicle 
of Nathan ben Saddi, in which the leaders of the popular 
party are satirized. William Moore was Judge of the Com- 
mon Pleas of Chester County and a violent partisan of the 
Proprietors. He expressed great dislike of the Quakers and 
openly abused them in a way to cause great irritation. A 
number of charges were preferred against him by his con- 
stituents, charges of serious misconduct and injustice. The 
Assembly asked him to appear and answer them. He de- 
nied their authority to summon him and in violent language 
refused to appear. Provost Smith of the University had 
1 Private letter of James Pemberton. 



ISAAC NORRIS, 2ND 195 

Judge Moore's reply printed in German and widely dis- 
tributed. For this they were arrested in January 1756 for 
libel. It was in the midst of the excitement of this con- 
troversy that the satire appeared. The prominent actors 
are mentioned by false names but easily distinguished at 
the time. We are concerned now only with the part re- 
ferring to Isaac Norris. 

" And Isaac the judge did according to the sayings of 
Adonis the Scribe (Franklin) and he mouldeth the Coun- 
cillors in his hands even as a potter mouldeth the clay. 

" So they gave him a great report among the people, and 
he grew proud in heart saying to himself, 

" ' I bid one go and he goeth, and another run and he run- 
neth. Am not I great in authority? If any man stand 
against my sayings thus and thus shall it be done unto him.' 

" And he became haughty and his mind swelled within 
him and he went from the ways of David his father. 

" And he made an image of paper in the shape of a calf, 
and the body seemed as though thirty calves were joined 
together but there was only one head and the head was like 
unto the head of Isaac the judge." 

The thirty calves probably refers to thirty members of 
the Assembly who followed his lead. 

The Friendly majority in the Assembly never returned. 
The Yearly Meeting persistently advised its members to 
accept no public places the duties of which were likely to 
compromise their principles and a succession of Indian and 
French wars seemed to make membership in the Assembly 
one of these questionable offices. Each year we have re- 
ports as to the number of Quakers. They never, except 
possibly once, amounted to a majority though it is evident 
that they would have been had the will of the people gov- 
erned the selection. It was however the same party acting 
through different representatives, and Isaac Norris was its 
undisputed leader. Among the Friends there was no com- 



196 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

petition and Benjamin Franklin was the only man outside 
the Society who was greatly influential in its councils. 

A correspondent of Thomas Penn after detailing the ef- 
forts of his friends to procure the election of " sensible and 
reasonable " men to the legislature of 1756 had to admit 
that their efforts were vain, and that the " veriest partisans 
against the Proprietors " had been returned including " one 
Quakerized Presbyterian and two Quakerized churchmen " 
heading the list with Isaac Norris. He said that " the 
Quakers were never more active though a few serious and 
grave men did not show themselves." The " Quaker party " 
ruled the state till the Revolution. 

War questions having been placed somewhat in the back- 
ground the contest with the Proprietors became the issue 
between the parties. The Friends led by Norris and 
Franklin and aided by the Germans and some of the 
Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of the west were vigorous op- 
ponents, while many of the wealthy Episcopalians of Phila- 
delphia rallied around the governor and the Penn family. 
The popularly elected legislature was always overwhelm- 
ingly for liberty from the restrictions imposed from Eng- 
land, and by limiting supplies and the salary of the 
Governor forced one access of privilege after another from 
the unwilling hands of the sons of William Penn. But 
these owners of a large part of the Province were too 
strongly entrenched in their inherited rights and privileges 
to be seriously affected by anything within the power of the 
freemen of the Province even though party feeling ran high 
and one legislature after another sent up its petitions and 
demands. 

The war must be carried into England and in 1757 Frank- 
lin and Norris were appointed agents to present the popular 
claims to the English government and to strive after some 
satisfactory arrangement with the Proprietors. Norris de- 



ISAAC NORRIS, 2ND 197 

clined on account of ill-health and Franklin went alone, ac- 
complishing however but little. 

The feeling became more and more bitter and by 1764 
the great body of the liberty party including the most of the 
Friends were of the mind that one remedy alone was left, 
the dispossession of the Proprietors of any share in the 
government and the acceptance of a Governor appointed 
by the Crown. This popular demand was reflected in the 
Assembly and in May, 1764, a resolution to that effect was 
passed by a large majority. The Speaker opposed it, and 
John Dickinson who was afterwards his son-in-law made his 
first great speech on the same side. But it was of no avail. 
Isaac Norris was now a feeble man and though treated with 
great respect could not control the House. He now in- 
formed them " that for 30 years past he had had the honor 
of serving as a representative of the people of the Province, 
and for more than half that time as Speaker; that in these 
ofiices he had uniformly endeavored to the best of his judg- 
ment to promote the public good. That the subject of the 
present debate was a matter of the utmost importance to the 
Province. That as his sentiments on the occasion were 
very different from the majority, and his seat in the chair 
prevented him from entering into the debate, he therefore 
prayed the House that if in consequence of their order his 
duty should oblige him to sign the petition as Speaker he 
might be permitted to offer his sentiments on the subject 
before he signed, and that they might be entered on the min- 
utes." 

Out of courtesy the request was granted but the next day 
he was not able to attend and instead sent in his resigna- 
tion as Speaker. A most flattering testimonial to the value 
of his past services was sent by the House asking for a with- 
drawal of the resignation, which he declined, and Benjamin 
Franklin was chosen in his place. 



198 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Franklin was however defeated for reelection in October 
1764 and Norris against his wishes was elected, and was 
again voted into the Speakership. This insistence upon his 
holding the place by a House which did not agree with his 
position on the important issue of the day is an indication 
of the strong respect and confidence of the Province. Frank- 
lin was again sent to England to effect the transfer, but the 
encroachments of the Crown soon caused the people of 
Pennsylvania to change their mind and accept the judg- 
ment of Norris. Franklin presented the petition but did 
not press it, and it was never granted. 

After a few days, Isaac Norris resigned again, and after 
an attempt to elect George Ashbridge, Joseph Fox succeeded 
to the chair. 

He died at Fair Hill on July 13th, 1766. 

In his political life he was the type of dignified honesty 
and devotion to the public service. A friend says of him: 
" In all his long public career he never asked a vote to get 
into the House nor solicited any member for posts of pri- 
vate advantage or employments." Happy the state which 
can call into its service and retain for a lifetime such a man, 
without asking him to vary his honest judgment or sac- 
rifice aught of his independence. As he said on one occa- 
sion when he left the Speaker's chair to speak on a matter 
of much moment, " No man shall ever stamp his foot on 
my grave and say, ' Curse him ! Here lies one who basely 
betrayed the liberties of his country.' " 

Isaac Norris was not especially prominent in Friendly 
affairs. Except as Clerk of the Monthly Meeting he does 
not seem to have held church positions. But his promi- 
nence, integrity, abilities, social position and wealth gave 
him a large standing among them as well as others and he 
always emphasized his connection. He regularly attended 
the Friends Meeting adjoining the grounds of Fair Hill, 



ISAAC NORRIS, 2ND 199 

on a lot which William Penn had given George Fox for the 
use of Friends. Deborah Logan says that after the First- 
day Meeting " All the decent strangers who frequented it 
were sure of an invitation to dine with him, where, as in 
the time of his parents, a good table and the warmest wel- 
come awaited them." His influence among others was 
probably the greater that he did not always do as the strict 
Friends desired and no one questioned his general loyalty 
and the sincerity of his convictions. 

His married life was short, his wife Sarah Logan Norris 
dying in 1744. Two sons died in infancy and the daughter 
Sarah in 1769, shortly after her father. Mary, the oldest, 
married John Dickinson. His unmarried sister, Elizabeth, 
became the kindly genius of the household which was a 
happy and harmonious one. He spent much of his leisure 
time in his library building which he had erected separately 
from the house and hence was saved from destruction when 
the British burnt the residence of the " arch-rebel Dickin- 
son." He was Trustee of the College, afterwards Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania, and was active in every movement 
for the development of the intellectual life and welfare of 
the city. He wrote French and Latin fluently and read 
most of the books of consequence of cotemporary literature. 

Thus as a man who was both scholarly and practical, 
adaptable and conscientious, tolerant and religious, he was 
able to guide the youthful Province through rather stormy 
times when the Holy Experiment had to be tempered with 
many conflicting interests and divergent judgments. 



JAMES PEMBERTON 

When state and church duties seemed to conflict, Isaac 
Norris usually decided in favor of the state. Under sim- 
ilar circumstances James Pemberton would give his prefer- 
ence to the church. Both were men of high principles and 
strong character. Both had the political instinct strongly 
developed, and found it difficult to keep out of public life. 
Both were men of means, good education and social stand- 
ing, closely related to each other by marriage. But Isaac 
Norris, 2nd, had an ancestry and education which tended 
towards what was practical and possible, and would bend 
his desires to secure it. James Pemberton lived more in 
the atmosphere of unwavering principle as was the habit of 
the stricter Friends of earlier days. The type of thought 
of Isaac Norris, 1st, and James Logan, was not quite the 
type which characterized the ancestors of James Pember- 
ton. 

The Pemberton family came to Pennsylvania in the fall 
of 1682 about the same time as William Penn. The group 
consisted of Ralph Pemberton, 72 years old, who soon died, 
his son Phineas, aged 33, James Harrison and wife, whose 
daughter Phebe had married Phineas Pemberton, and a 
number of children, relatives and dependents. An uncle 
had preceded them to the Province and had bought land in 
Bucks County nearly opposite the site of the present 
Trenton and this determined them to seek homes in the same 
neighborhood. James Harrison was placed in charge of 
William Pcnn's country place, Pennsbury, and Phineas 
Pemberton bought 300 acres near by, and later a larger 



JAMES PEMBERTON 201 

track farther from the river. Almost immediately he was 
seized upon for public service, first as register for Bucks 
County, then in 1685 as a member of the Assembly for Bucks 
County, with increasing trust and confidence as the years 
went by. The civil affairs of his county came largely into 
his hands and in 1696 he succeeded Thomas Lloyd as Mas- 
ter of the Rolls of the Province. He died in 1702, aged 53 
years and as Samuel Carpenter writes to William Penn, 
" He will be greatly missed having left few or none in these 
parts or the adjacent like him for wisdom and integrity and 
a general service." He was equally prominent in the church, 
serving as clerk of the Yearly Meeting and otherwise. 

Phineas and Phebe Pemberton had nine children of whom 
four outlived him. We are concerned with Israel the eldest 
surviving son. He came to Philadelphia as a boy and 
served his apprenticeship to Samuel Carpenter, the great 
capitalist of the daj^ and soon established himself in very 
large successful mercantile transactions. He became the 
wealthiest and best known merchant of Philadelphia. In 
1710 he married Rachel Read, whose sister was the wife 
of James Logan. 

By his financial and social position thus assured, his 
inherent abilities and trustworthiness and his generous 
hospitality unrivalled in the Province, he rapidly gained 
confidence and respect and held a series of important places 
in church and state. For 19 successive years from 1731 
to 1750 he was a member of the Assembly, and in 1745 was 
elected Speaker, but declined. Like his father he was clerk 
of the Yearly Meeting and after 1729 an elder. 

His political life covered the high water mark of Quaker 
domination, and while not obtrusive, its effectiveness was 
attested by the numerous committees for routine service of 
which he was a member. It was a model of fidelity and 
usefulness. 



202 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

He left his large estate to his three sons, Israel, James 
and John, the only ones of his ten children who survived 
him. 

The atmosphere of the Pemberton home was devoutly 
religious. To build up their spiritual life by consecration, 
kindness and service was a constant effort. The volumi- 
nous letters of the three brothers are some of the best treat- 
ises on the conditions of the times, giving us the inner 
history of Quakerism as a religion and as a factor in 
government. Mostly addressed to English correspondents 
like Dr. Fothergill, and the travelling ministers who went 
through the colonies and when in Philadelphia made the 
Pemberton houses their homes, they give the sort of infor- 
mation which is often taken for granted in correspondence 
between friends of the same community. John was a min- 
ister. There is no trace of any but religious interests in 
his letters. He travelled extensively in Gospel service and 
died at Pyrmont, Germany, while thus engaged. But Israel 
and James were very wide awake to every feature of pro- 
vincial life. They took part in politics, joined societies for 
conducting hospitals, for slavery abolition, for Indian con- 
ciliation, for every beneficent movement of the times, while 
their purses were liberally opened for private charities. 

Israel Pemberton " the head of the Quaker interests " as 
John Adams called him in pre-Revolutionary times or " the 
king of the Quakers " as he was dubbed by the people in 
general, was the oldest and in some respects the most in- 
fluential of the three. In later life he lost his interest in 
ordinary provincial politics when the Quaker policy of In- 
dian conciliation was exchanged for warfare and refused 
for ten years even to vote. 

A little piece of by-play may give some light on the small 
political troubles of his early days. In the exciting contest 
of 1739 when he was about 24 years old he criticized the 



JAMES PEMBERTON 203 

Governor most severely in a company of which Alexander 
Gray don (he whose memoirs we read with so much interest) 
was a member. He said that it was the Governor's design 
to overturn the Constitution, and reduce them to the King's 
government; that the Governor carried on the debate with- 
out dignity ; that he had no doubt that the Governor would 
use his influence in England to set the Assembly in the 
wrong, and that he would make an unjust representation of 
the matter. Graydon narrated this conversation to the 
Governor, and the next day told Pemberton so, upon which 
Pemberton said he was glad of it; that he would not make 
any apology, for it was a good thing that these truths should 
come to the Governor's knowledge, for his sycophants who 
lived around him would never tell him, and that he would 
prove that the Governor said that he would bring matters 
to extremities. This would not now seem a very serious 
offense, but the Governor was rash and issued a warrant 
for the arrest of Pemberton. After some discussion in the 
council as to the legality of this warrant, it was allowed to 
proceed. The Supreme Court interfered, however, with the 
serving of the warrant, issued a writ of habeas corpus, and 
ordered that Israel Pemberton, Jr., should not be called 
before the council, which simply indicates that the court 
and council were on different sides of the political contro- 
versy. The Governor declared this writ illegal, and again 
ordered the sheriff to serve the warrant, who reported " that 
Pemberton read the warrant and called it nonsense; that 
he, the sheriff, being ordered by the secretary to behave 
toward Mr. Pemberton with civility, had permitted him to 
go out of his sight in the house of John Kinsey, Esq., after 
his word was given that he would not escape, and he notwith- 
standing, had escaped." The Governor would not excuse 
the sheriff, and Pemberton was held in legal confinement, 
the Governor having come to the conclusion that the writ of 



204 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

the Supreme Court was illegal, under the circumstances. 
He therefore instructed the sheriff again to find Pemberton, 
but he had gone to Chester. However, he came back the 
next day. The sheriff then reports in these words the 
trouble which Israel gave him in the attempt to serve the 
warrant: 

" That yesterday about twelve of the Clock he came to 
town; his Deputy gave him a Warrant from the Governor 
to take Mr. Pemberton, Junr.; that he went to Mr. Pem- 
berton's House about one of the clock, and had answer that 
he was not in town; he went again about three of the clock, 
and had answer that he was gone out; he went this morn- 
ing about three-quarters of an hour after Eight in the morn- 
ing, and asked his Clerk or Book Keeper if Mr. Pemberton 
was at home, who said he was, and went to some other 
Apartment of the House, as he thought, to see for his mas- 
ter, but returned and said his Master was in bed; Mr. Rob- 
inson went to another Door of the House, and asked Mrs. 
Pemberton if Mr. Pemberton was within, who said he was 
in Bed ; Mr. Robinson asked what time he would be up, and 
had answer he would in half an hour; he went towards Mr. 
Pcmberton's House about twelve of the Clock, and in his 
going down Chestnut Street, by John Miller's at the Sign 
of the City of Dublin, he saw Mr. Pemberton standing on 
the Platform at his own Door, but when he had got so far 
as Front Street, he saw Mr. Pemberton tack about and go 
into his House, and since has seen nothing of him." 

Evidently the Governor was making himself ridiculous, 
and the Quaker was getting the better of the manoeuvres. 
An intermediary was found in Andrew Hamilton, the 
Speaker of the Assembly, who said that Israel Pemberton, 
Sr., was very uneasy " at his son's being compelled to keep 
his house for fear of being taken by the sheriff, to the great 
prejudice of his business," and the warrant was withdrawn. 

Israel Pemberton with his great capacity and wide inter- 
ests could not well keep out of public life. For a short 



JAMES PEMBERTON 205 

time he was in the Assembly and took an active part on its 
important committees. After the Indian War of 1755 broke 
out he gave the most of his time and much money to striving 
for a reconciliation. " The Friendly Association for gain- 
ing and preserving peace with the Indians by pacific meas- 
ures," was formed, Israel Pemberton being the leading 
figure. 

The Walking Purchase of 1737 and the subsequent for- 
cible removal of the Minisink Indians from their ancestral 
homes between the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers, the Albany 
Treaty of 1754 when the Indian rights in all western Penn- 
sylvania were sold to the Penns by the Iroquois without 
regard to the dwellers on the soil, French intrigue and the 
invasion of traders and settlers had transformed the Dela- 
ware and Shawnese Indians, the ancient friends of William 
Penn, into bitter and inveterate foes of the frontier white 
men and sent them into warfare. The Friends addressed 
the Governor offering to pay " a much larger portion of our 
estates than the heaviest taxes of a war would be expected 
to require " for the purpose of regaining the friendship. The 
Association hoped first to detach the chief Tedyuscung and 
the northern Delawares from the French alliance. A large 
sum of money was raised, chiefly by Friends, partly by 
sympathetic German sects, to purchase presents. Confer- 
ences were held at Easton in 1756, at Lancaster in 1757 
and again at Easton in 1758. Israel Pemberton carried 
£2000 to Pittsburg the following year to treat with the 
western Indians. The Friends had the satisfaction of 
knowing that their diplomacy, their presents and their in- 
fluence had pacified the Indians and for a little time peace 
prevailed on the frontier. 

The Indians appreciated the differences among the 
whites and saved the frontier Quakers from the tomahawk 
and burning buildings. Israel Pemberton said after the 



206 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

1758 treaty, " It was by justice the first settlers of the 
province obtained their (the Indians) friendship and the 
name of a Quaker of the same spirit as William Penn still 
is in the highest estimation among their old men . , . and 
there is a considerable number of us here united in a reso- 
lution to endeaver by a like conduct to fix the same good 
impression of all of us in the minds of the rising generation." 
But they did not have as clear a field as William Penn 
had. The Lieutenant-Governor, the agent of his master in 
England, Thomas Penn, had commercial designs on Indian 
land which the first Proprietor would have spurned. His 
party in Pennsylvania excited by Indian outrages on the 
frontiers and by the hope to get Quakers out of the gov- 
ernment pressed him for vigorous measures. The contest 
kept up for years with alternate success. The spirit of the 
Friendly Association, in its endeavor to smooth the way on 
both sides is conveyed in an address to the Governor from 
a meeting held in Israel Pemberton's house late in the year 
1756 where they say: 

" If our furnishing them a supply of clothing against the 
approaching winter in addition to what is provided at the 
public expense may ... be consistent with the Governor's 
pleasure we shall cheerfully provide them . . . to be de- 
livered by the Governor in such measure as will most 
effectually promote the public service and express our 
friendly disposition toward them." 

It was to this cause that Israel Pemberton devoted his 
energies up to the Revolutionary War. By friends and foes 
alike he was regarded the leader of the movement. " King 
Wampum " became another of his pseudonyms. Had he 
had a free field it is not improbable that he might have 
solved the problem of harmonizing red men's rights with 
white men's reasonable desires. He did restrain several 
tribes from the warpath and so saved the lives of many 



JAMES PEMBERTON 207 

frontiersmen. But while his friends carried the legislative 
branch, the executive was out of their reach and the Indian 
question was ultimately settled by the military arm driving 
the natives from the Province, the Friends tempering the 
process as they could. 

The embitterment of the frontiersmen, especially the 
settlers from the north of Ireland, towards the Quakers was 
strikingly shown in 1764 when a band of them after ex- 
terminating the Conestoga tribe in Lancaster County, 
marched down to Philadelphia with the ostensible purpose 
of giving a band of Moravian Indians the same ruthless 
treatment. If the Quakers made any show of resistance, 
they, and especially Israel Pemberton, were to be treated 
in like manner. A demand was made that he be given up 
to the rioters. Israel seems to have considered prudence 
to be wise under the circumstances and having been ad- 
vised that his life was in danger " was banished for a few 
days." 

All the Friends, however, did not run away in this man- 
ner. Some 200 of the younger among them opened the 
Meeting House at Market and Second Street, stacked their 
arms in the gallery and in company with many other citi- 
zens awaited the attack. The " Paxton Boys " never got 
further than Germantown where they were met by a com- 
mittee of which Benjamin Franklin was the head, per- 
suaded to state their claims, some of which were just, and 
finding that they had no chance against a city in arms, went 
back to their homes. 

Then followed a pamphlet warfare in which the relative 
claims of Presbyterianism and Quakerism were discussed 
with great acerbity. Benjamin Franklin came to the front 
against the lynchers and was gratefully received by the 
Friends as an ally. " The Quaker Unmasked " was a se- 
vere arraignment of their policy, which was replied to by 



2o8 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

'-'The Delineated Presbyterian Played Hob With." The 
first stated that " to govern is absolutely repugnant to the 
avowed principles of Quakerism " and the second, '' to be 
governed is absolutely repugnant to the avowed principles 
of Presbyterianism " — both of which statements have in 
them an element of truth. There were many stronger and 
indecent charges made and Israel Pemberton was the tar- 
get of a large share of them without, however, so far as we 
know, provoking any reply from him. He weathered the 
storm, however, in the esteem of his friends and had the 
satisfaction of seeing the Indian question settled in Penn- 
sylvania for colonial times with as much justice to the red 
men as could reasonably have been expected in the excited 
condition of the frontiersmen. The only concession which 
the " Boys " obtained at the time was a temporary offer of 
rewards for the scalps of male and female Indians, a strange 
edict to come from the grandson of William Penn. 

When the question of handing over the government to the 
king came up in 1764 and the general feeling against the 
proprietors became so strong in the Province as to turn 
most of the Quaker sentiment away from them, Israel 
Pemberton took the conservative position along with Nor- 
ris and Dickinson. In a private letter he seriously criti- 
cized the unwise policy of Thomas Penn and his selfish 
actions towards the colonists and Indians, but he judged, 
and as it turned out, judged rightly, that the chances of 
a Crown colony were no better. He sympathized strongly 
with the Speaker in his efforts to defeat the transfer. A 
paragraph in a letter of his probably explains as fully as 
anything the action of that official in the last days of his 
public life. 

" We expected the advice and conduct of Isaac Norris, 
who had for many years been Speaker of our Assembly, 
would have had some effect but in this we were disao- 



JAMES PEMBERTON 209 

pointed. Last summer being in a weak state of body, and 
tired out with the tedious controversies with the Governor, 
when he found the Assembly in general determined in pur- 
suing those measures, which he apprehended it unsafe to be 
accessory to, he chose to resign his seat. Some change 
being this year made in the Assembly, and his state of health 
much recovered, as it was said the Governor had instruc- 
tions to make some concessions, he entertained the hopes of 
promoting a reconciliation, and restraining from precipitate 
measures. He then was induced to consent to accept the 
Speaker's seat again, but when he found the Governor de- 
clined communicating anything towards a reconciliation, 
and that the majority of the present Assembly were bent on 
pursuing the measures he had before disapproved, after 
giving the house his sentiments thereon, he again resigned 
his seat and retired home heartily concerned for the un- 
happy circumstances of his country, which he could neither 
redress nor prevent, his salutary advice being rejected with 
contempt by those who formerly revered it." 

The reaction from any tendency towards royal govern- 
ment came almost immediately. England began the series 
of taxation experiments which a decade later brought on 
the Revolutionary War. The opposition was general. Re- 
fusal to pay taxes, agreements for non-importation and non- 
exportation, the ejection of officers who were deputed to 
collect the Stamp taxes, were, with the possible exception of 
the last, quite Quaker methods of resistance. The names 
of over fifty Friends are on the agreement to import no more 
English goods, and the list includes Israel Pemberton. They, 
however, while resisting, counseled moderation and it is 
largely due to this that the measures were milder than in 
Boston. Thus when the tea ship came in 1773 consigned 
to a Quaker firm, instead of the spectacular performance of 
Boston Harbor, they sent it back without unloading the 
cargo, loaning the captain enough to victual. If some of 
their statements seem unnecessarily loyal in tone, it must be 
remembered that nearly a year after this George Washing- 



210 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

ton had declared, " No such thing as independence is de- 
sired by any thinking man in America," and John Adams 
had pledged even Massachusetts to the statement, " That 
there are any who pant after independence is the greatest 
slander on the Province." But sentiment developed rapidly 
after this. 

There seems to be little doubt that Israel Pemberton and 
the other wealthy Quaker merchants of Philadelphia were 
British sympathizers during the war. That many, perhaps 
most, of the membership were not so is probable. The 
Meetings disowned every one who took any part, how- 
ever slight, in resistance in either direction and the minutes 
show some 400 who in this way brought upon themselves 
the penalty on the American side and perhaps not more 
than a half dozen on the British. The testimony against 
both was borne impartially. But those who remained 
in good standing adopted, whatever their sympathies, the 
policy of non-participation because of conscientious oppo- 
sition to the means used. It is at least probable that the 
Friends who actively joined the American forces were not 
without the consciousness of a large body who agreed with 
their objects if not their methods. The long struggle for 
liberty against Proprietary and Crown encroachment did 
not leave them without a fellow feeling for the cause even 
when they could not actively join. But we can hardly 
include in this list the Pembertons and their closest 
associates. 

Perhaps the best authority on the Quaker position during 
the war, because unbiased, is Brissot de Warville, a French 
traveler who went through the country in 1788, afterwards 
guillotined in Paris as a Girondist. 

" It was at this epoch (the Revolution) particularly that 
an animosity was excited against them (the Quakers) 
which is not yet entirely allayed. Faithful to their reli- 



JAMES PEMBERTON 211 

gious principles, they declared they could take no part in 
the war, and disavowed or excommunicated every member 
of their Society who served with either the American or the 
British army. . . . Notwithstanding my principles, I do 
not the less think that the violent persecution of the Quakers 
for their pacific neutrality was essentially wrong. 

" If their refusal had been the first of this kind ; if it had 
been dictated solely by their attachment to the British 
cause; if it had only served them to conceal the secret 
proofs which they might have given of this attachment, 
certainly they had been culpable and perhaps persecution 
had been lawful. But this neutrality was enjoined upon 
them by the religious opinions which they profess, and 
which they have practised from their origin. But exclusive 
of this, whatever prejudiced or ill informed writers may 
have asserted, the truth, which I have taken great pains to 
obtain, is that the majority of the Quakers did not incline 
more to one party than to the other; and that they did good 
indifferently to both, and in fact to all those who stood in 
need of assistance. If some of the Society of Quakers 
served in the British Army, there were some likewise who 
served in the American army — and amongst others may be 
mentioned the names of Generals Greene, Mifflin and Lacy ; 
but the Society excommunicated indifferently all those who 
took up arms. . . . 

" I have heard no one speak more impartially of the Qua- 
kers than this celebrated man (Washington) whose spirit 
of justice is particularly remarkable. He acknowledged to 
me that in the course of the war he had entertained an un- 
favourable opinion of the Society ; he, in fact, knew little of 
them, because at that period there were few members of the 
sect in Virginia. He attributed to their political sentiments 
what was the effect of their religious principles. When he 
encamped in Chester County, principally inhabited by 
Quakers, he supposed himself to be in the enemy's country, 
as he could not induce a single Quaker to act for him in the 
character of a spy. But no one served as a spy against him 
in the employ of the British army. . . . 

" General Washington, having since better understood the 
spirit of the Society, concludes by esteeming them. He 
acknowledged to me that, on considering the simplicity of 



212 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

their manners, their fondness for economy, the excellence of 
their morals, and the good example thej^ afforded, joined to 
the attachment they showed for the Constitution, he re- 
garded them as the best citizens of the new government, 
which required a great degree of obedience and the banish- 
ment of luxury." ^ 

John Adams in his Diary tells us of an unexpected en- 
counter with Israel Pemberton when in 1774 the New Eng- 
land delegation came to Philadelphia to enlighten the Quak- 
ers and others as to the principles of liberty as developed 
in Massachusetts. They were invited to a meeting in Car- 
penters Hall and they concluded that their opportunity had 
come. But the Friends took charge of the meeting. Israel 
told them very plainly that " Friends had a concern about 
the condition of things in Massachusetts; that they had 
received complaints from some Anabaptists and some 
Friends against certain laws of that Province restrictive of 
liberty of conscience. 

" The laws of New England and particularly of Massa- 
chusetts were inconsistent with liberty of conscience for 
they not only compelled men to pay for the building of 
churches and the support of ministers but to go to some 
known religious assembly on First-days; and that he and 
his friends were desirous of engaging us to assure them 
that our state would repeal all those laws and place 
things as they w^ere in Pennsylvania." This turning of the 
tables was a sad blow to the complacency of the delegates 
of the " Sons of Liberty." They denied the enforcement 
of such laws of recent years but stated that " they might as 
well hope to turn the heavenly bodies out of their annual 

» "Nouveau Voyage dans les Etats-Unis de I'Ameriquo Septen- 
trionale fait en 1788; par J. P. Brissot (WarviUe), Citoyeu Fran- 
cais." The portion here translated is omitted in the EngUsh 
edition of 1792. See Hazard's Register of Pennsylvania, Vol. 
VIII, page 315. 



JAMES PEMBERTON 213 

and diurnal course as the people of Massachusetts at the 
present day from their Meeting House and Sunday laws." 
They then began to explain how such laws were compatible 
with liberty of conscience but Pemberton called out, " Don't 
urge liberty of conscience in favor of such laws." Unques- 
tionably the Quaker had the better of the debate for the 
facts were on his side and Israel Pemberton was too ag- 
gressive a pacifist to lose the opportunity. 

When in the fall of 1777 the British Army was approach- 
ing Philadelphia the American government undertook to 
remove leading citizens who were suspected of sympathy 
with the invading force. This will be treated more fully 
later in this chapter. The three brothers Pemberton were 
arrested and by a rather arbitrary stretch of authority 
were banished for eight months to Winchester, Virginia. 
They were then released with something of an apology. 
But the severe winter which froze up the American Army 
at Valley Forge was too much for the Philadelphians sud- 
denly removed from the comforts of the city to the bleak 
quarters of west Virginia. Two of them died during the 
winter and Israel Pemberton was so weakened that early 
in 1779 he died aged 64 years. He was the only one of the 
brothers who left any descendants of the name. One of 
these by a strange reversion was the Southern General 
Pemberton who surrendered Vicksburg to General Grant in 
1863. 

James Pemberton writes of his brother: " His health was 
much impaired by a fit of sickness at the time of our exile 
and was never perfectly restored. The various afflictions 
with which he was of late years encompassed had much 
contributed to weaken his constitution and vital strength 
which the death of his wife six months before his own 
further affected; but by exerting himself he kept about most 
of the winter and was active on many necessary occasions 



214 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

for the relief of the afflicted and oppressed with whom he 
always nearly sympathized and was unwearied in his 
endeavors to promote their ease and redress, on which 
account and his superior abilities, assiduity and resolution 
in difficult cases relating both to religion and civil society 
he is and will be much missed among us, his integrity, 
benevolence and many other virtuous qualifications ren- 
dered him generally respected and his death greatly 
lamented." 

James Pemberton the second of the brothers was born 
in 1723. He had all the opportunities which Philadelphia 
afi"orded for an education, with a year in England. His 
brother Israel was a man of courage and initiative full of 
aggressive plans which absorbed his energies but who sel- 
dom allowed himself to be tied down to official life. James 
was the useful man, the politician, the office holder, the 
letter writer, using the words in no belittling sense, who 
while aiding his brother's large interests carried on the 
details and committee work most efficiently and suc- 
cessfully. 

In church affairs he was a member of the " Meeting for 
Sufferings," the executive body of Philadelphia Friends, 
from its origin in 1756 till 1808 a few months before his 
death. He was for about thirty years including the Revo- 
lutionary War the Clerk of the Yearly Meeting, the prac- 
tical President of that court of last appeal of the Quaker 
system. He was on important committees whenever needed 
and for a half century or more very little went on without 
his co-operation in the affairs of his church. 

He was a member of the legislative Assembly of the 
province in 1755 and 1756 and again after 1765. His 
letters ^ are a mine of wealth concerning political and eccle- 

1 For many facts in this paper the author is indebted to these 
manuscript letters not previously examined for purposes of pubhca- 
tion. 



JAMES PEMBERTON 215 

siastical matters in the provinces from his view point. He 
was an intimate associate and, except in matters of war- 
fare, a strong believer in Benjamin Franklin. He founded 
the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, persuaded Franklin 
to accept the presidency and on his death in 1790 succeeded 
him in the place. He was the confidential friend of Dr. 
Fothergill and David Barclay who with Dr. Franklin 
attempted the not unlikely experiment of a reconciliation 
of England with the provinces just before the war and 
used Pemberton as their colonial agent. Their letters agree 
closely with Franklin's account in his Autobiography. 

The Assembly of the Province was made up largely of 
farmers, the best to be had. They were honest, intelligent, 
and well-intentioned, but lacked for the most part a knowl- 
edge of political history and business training. The oppor- 
tunities of a country Friend for anything but an elementary 
education were very limited, mostly non-existent. In a 
clear case of provincial policy their judgment could be 
relied on to do the right thing. Penn had drilled into them 
the possession of certain rights as to legislation which they 
tenaciously held to. How they came to be selected as 
candidates is an interesting but unknown subject. Prob- 
ably as there was but little emolument and no graft con- 
nected with the office there was no great competition, but 
by some process of nomination the Quaker machine main- 
tained its supremacy and sent from the three populous 
counties a practically unanimous line of these sectaries up 
to 1756. Even from the frontier counties mostly made up 
of non-Quakers from Germany it often happened that a 
Friend was selected to represent their views on peace or 
taxation. 

In such an Assembly men like David Lloyd, John Kin- 
sey, Isaac Norris and James Pemberton with their legal 
and business training, their large contact with the world, 



2i6 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

their sturdy character and their sympathetic appreciation 
of the point of view of their simple and trustful associates 
would have unlimited influence and create the unity of 
action in plans and policy, so strikingly displayed in the 
legislative history of the province. The City of Philadel- 
phia had two members and each of the counties surrounding 
it eight. Towards the end of the provincial period new 
counties were taken in, and an apportionment, probably 
unfair, gave them a smaller representation. The city mem- 
bers were largely depended on to supply the leadership and 
while the Quaker population there found it more difficult 
than in the country to carry its representation, they often 
succeeded when a strong man like James Pemberton could 
be found to lead them. We find him therefore frequently 
elected and serving on the most important posts. 

The constitution gave them rather unusual privileges for 
a colonial legislature. The right to meet without call from 
any power, to adjourn at will, to be free from arrest, to 
control money affairs, to have their laws recognized unless 
vetoed by the crown and the other rights as claimed by the 
advanced freemen of the day, were guaranteed to them in 
Penn's Frame of 1701 and they were always looking very 
seriously at anything that seemed an infringement. But 
when it came to putting this sensitive feeling into action 
they had to depend on the creative wisdom and literary 
ability of the city members. It was probably no great dis- 
advantage that they had to fight at the polls for their rights 
during these years. It kept the sentiment for liberty awake 
and in action. The details were somewhat unlike those 
in New England, but each was approaching the same goal 
by a different method, the Puritan by a process which 
was sure to culminate in avowed resistance, the Quaker by 
legal methods, by appeal and argument, by a refusal to 
obey oppressive laws, and a willingness to take the conse- 



JAMES PEMBERTON 2i7 

quences of disobedience. Had they been able to control 
the province at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War a 
test of the efficacy of their policy might have been made, 
but the action of 1756 put them out of power, as they 
probably did not appreciate, forever. 

In the spring of 1755 the Quarterly Meeting of Philadel- 
phia largely under Pemberton influence sent to London a 
paper explaining the circumstances of Quaker ascendency 
in the legislature. They told how the Friends had been 
elected without exertion on their part often against their 
wishes, and that this applied to counties where they were 
in a minority as well as others; that for sixteen years they 
had been kept in power by voters who did not share their 
pacific principles; that their policy had advanced the inter- 
est of the proprietors by the general prosperity of the 
province; and that if there were others who could be relied 
upon to preserve the liberties guaranteed by the charter and 
maintained by them they would be quite willing to be 
relieved of the thankless task of engaging in the controver- 
sies of the times. It was the last defense of active Quaker 
participation in politics and in the main unanswerable. 

But when in the crisis of 1756 the London Friends ad- 
vised abstention to save the general imposition of an oath, 
James Pemberton and six other Friends gave up their places 
in the Assembly. This was the beginning of the break. 
The meetings acting on the advice used their efforts to have 
others withdraw and four more yielded and resigned. In 
the fall a number refused reelection. James Pemberton 
probably held the key to the situation and his action deter- 
mined the loss of direct Quaker control for the future. 

But the habits and instincts developed by seventy years 
of political control died slowly. For the next ten years 
there might at any time have been a Quaker Assembly, if 
the meetings had not exerted themselves to prevent it. In 



2i8 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

1761 after the war ended there was probably a majority of 
nominal Friends, but steadily the " weighty " Friends op- 
posed. James Pemberton whose political tendencies were 
hard to keep down, made a sort of an apology for accept- 
ing reelection in 1765. He agreed " with reluctance " 
" through solicitation of Friends " " to keep out an envious 

Pres n." (It will be remembered that this was in the 

hot days of the Presbyterian-Quaker controversy following 
the Paxton riots of the year before.) " Valuable interests 
were suffering because no one properly represented them," 
and so on. The troubles which led up to the Revolutionary 
War seem to have convinced most Friends that they had 
better confine their attention to local and moral affairs. 

In the controversy over the transfer of the government 
to the King he inclined to take the popular side for he was 
much opposed to the demands of the Proprietors. At least 
he says while not expecting much from the Crown, he thinks 
that the agitation will bring the Proprietors to terms. His 
idea of the attitude of a Quaker politician in a contest is 
expressed by the statement, " Christian charity teaches us 
to forgive our enemies and Christian prudence to beware 
of them." He supported the idea of sending Franklin to 
England and writes Dr. Fothergill : " No man in the prov- 
ince has been so influential in promoting the public good; 
the most useful institutions we have among us may be 
attributed in great measure to his great understanding and 
disinterested regard for the welfare of the province." 

Among the institutions referred to the Pennsylvania Hos- 
pital is prominent. It was a Quaker concern from the start. 
In 1709 the Monthly Meeting of Philadelphia made a move 
in this direction by sending over to England by James 
Logan a request for financial aid and a charter for a hos- 
pital. What reception this met with is unknown, except 
that nothing resulted. 



JAMES PEMBERTON 219 

In 1751 Dr. Thomas Bond and Benjamin Franklin took 
up the matter again. In a little time popular subscription 
and an appropriation from the legislature gave the neces- 
sary financial basis, and thus started the first hospital for 
sick and insane in the new world. The largest contribu- 
tors were Friends and so were a majority of the managers 
for 150 years. Israel Femberton, Jr., served on the board 
from 1751 until his death in 1779 and James Femberton 
from 1756 to 1780 when he resigned " for various consid- 
erations " Such work was strictly in line with the Fem- 
berton idea of charity, to all branches of which they were 
liberal contributors of time and money. The hospital 
served as a sort of headquarters for Quaker leadership in 
the days following 1750 as did the college, now university, 
for the Episcopalians. 

About the same time James Femberton sent m an earnest 
protest against New England Friends " removing to settle 
on the lands in Nova Scotia from whence the poor unhappy 
neutrals were in the beginning of the war removed, as such 
a settlement does not appear suitable for any under our 
profession when we consider the manner these distressed 
people were dispossessed." As at this time he was 
interested in all the city charities it is not a large stretch 
of imagination for Longfellow to note the ministrations of 
Evangeline in the Friends' Alms House where " her ear was 
pleased with the Thee and Thou of the Quakers." 

It is not a matter of wonder that the authorities in the 
troublous days of September, 1777, should have been 
looking for British sympathizers in Fhiladelphia. Sir Wil- 
liam Howe was marching his army toward the city from 
the Chesapeake. This corner of Fennsylvama had never 
been warm for the war. There were outspoken militant 
Tories; besides the non-militant Friends, and spying was 
evidently going on extensively. How far Friends were 
actively implicated they did not know. 



220 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

To ascertain this the minutes of the various Meetings 
were seized. Those of us who since that time have had 
the opportunity to read these volumes, know that there 
was nothing stronger than appeals to the members to be 
faithful to their principles. So the officials found ; and the 
books were soon returned. Then they decided to banish 
a group of the more suspicious people, striking more par- 
ticularly those whose prominence would produce popular 
effect. About forty were selected of whom nearly half 
were Friends. They were not tried or heard, though they 
sent urgent appeals and statements of their position to the 
Council of the State, to Congress, and to the people of 
Pennsylvania. Chief Justice McKean allowed a writ of 
Habeas Corpus which was ignored. Their private papers 
were examined and nothing incriminating was found. Then 
they were offered freedom on taking oath or aflfirmation 
of fidelity to the new government, which seemed too much 
like a confession of guilt for most of them to agree to. 
Other tests were applied and the list was reduced to twenty, 
of whom seventeen were Friends. The decree was that 
they were to be banished to Staunton (changed to Win- 
chester), Virginia, at their own expense. This banishment 
lasted until spring, when General Washington intervened 
on their behalf, and the orders came to conduct them back 
to Philadelphia through the lines of both armies " treating 
them on the road with that polite attention and care which 
is due to men who act on the purest motives, to gentlemen 
whose stations in life entitle them to respect however they 
may differ in political sentiments from those in whose power 
they are." 

A sort of a joint journal was kept, written by James 
Pcmbcrton which has been printed. Two of the exiles suc- 
cumbed to the severe treatment and died in Virginia and 
others were greatly weakened. Almost immediately on their 



JAMES PEMBERTON 221 

return they joined with other Friends in another appeal to 
the members for fidelity to the anti-war attitude of the 

past. 

When the war was over the energies of James Pemberton 
were directed largely to two causes in addition to the gen- 
eral work of the Society. If he desired further political 
life, which is doubtful, it probably would not have been 
accorded him for a decade, for by meeting action and popu- 
lar wish it was denied to Friends. 

He was interested in educational movements among 
Friends. Evidently the cause was at a low ebb, and all 
the more so because many of the better educated Philadel- 
phia Friends had actively espoused the American side in 
the war and been disowned. The country Friends, worthy, 
moral, traditional people, had nothing but their elementary 
schools attached to the meeting houses to give them train- 
ing. There are probably few opportunities for education 
better than the conjunction of an aspiring youth with an 
inspiring teacher in an ungraded school, and such oppor- 
tunities sometimes present themselves. But neither side of 
the condition was fulfilled in most cases and a rather 
materialistic attitude relieved somewhat by the idealism 
of some of the preaching in meeting was settling down on 
the Society. The objection to theological training as un- 
necessary was extended to mean objection to higher educa- 
tion as undesirable, and mediocrity was spreading its 
dangerous hold. James Pemberton was a friend and active 
correspondent of John Dickinson, Owen Biddle and others 
who had a larger vision and a better background and in 
course of time Westtown Boarding School evolved from 
the controversy, opening its doors in 1799. The school itself 
was for some time largely elementary but it gave to certain 
Friendly youths a chance to come in contact with a better 
type of scholarship than they had been used to and was 
the beginning of better days. 



222 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

The other interest for which James Pemberton wrought 
most assiduously was less denominational — the cause of 
anti-slavery. The Friends had cleared themselves during 
the war of holding slaves and had at least partially paid 
the freed negroes for past services. Pennsylvania in 1780, 
the first among the states, passed a law for gradual aboli- 
tion. Past efforts had reduced the number of slaves in the 
state to about 4,000, while in the surrounding states there 
were 103,000 in Maryland, 9,000 in Delaware, 11,000 in 
New Jersey and 21,000 in New York and the people were 
ready almost unanimously for a forward move in the nation 
at large. The Yearly Meeting in 1783 sent to the Congress 
of the Confederation a paper asking it to take steps towards 
abolishing the slave trade signed by 535 Friends, but that 
body was too powerless to do anything. As soon as the 
national government was formed they again made an at- 
tempt. They called attention to the former paper which had 
been followed by action in a number of states, and appealed 
to the Golden Rule as the basis of action. An acrimonious 
debate followed. A year later a petition from Warner 
Mifflin, a Friend from Delaware, who had freed and taken 
care of his own slaves was " returned to him by the clerk 
of the House " after serious controversy. Again in 1797 a 
Quaker memorial produced a violent debate. 

These petitions while creating no immediate legislation 
did bring about a large growtli of popular sentiment. Dur- 
ing all the years up to the Civil War Friendly action stim- 
ulated and to a large extent led the anti-slavery movement. 

These early congressional debates brought out the stand- 
ing of Friends as to their war attitude. The Southerners 
attacked them as undesirable citizens on account of their 
record. " We took each other with our mutual bad habits 
and respective evils for better, for worse; the northern 
states adopted us with our slaves and we adopted them 



JAMES PEMBERTON 223 

with their Quakers," said Smith of South Carolina. On 
the other hand the northern Congressmen especially those 
from Pennsylvania and New Jersey were their eulogists. 
Boudinot, the Commissary-General during the war testified 
that their voluntary relief of suffering had greatly aided 
the situation. 

James Pemberton during these times was President of 
the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of 
Slavery which he had founded and of which he was the 
mainstay, and to this cause he gave much of the energy of 
his declining years. He died in 1809, eighty-five years old, 
greatly respected. 



JOHN DICKINSON 

The men whose lives we have been considering divided 
their interest in state and church in varying proportions. 
Thomas Lloyd was primarily a minister and reluctantly 
assumed the burdens which his pre-eminent fitness placed 
upon him as political leader of the colony. David Lloyd 
was an ingrained politician looked upon at least in his 
earlier days with considerable distrust by the Friends of 
weight in the meeting, but ever faithful to the traditions 
and testimonies of the Society. James Logan and his son- 
in-law Isaac Norris tried to put Quaker principles into 
active operation but found the difficulties so great in the 
case of those relating to warfare, that they somewhat com- 
promised. John Kinsey held his own in both fields with 
remarkable success and was trusted as a shrewd and clear- 
sighted political leader, no less than as the man of influence 
and power in his Yearly Meeting. James Pemberton 
equally faithful in both never had the preeminence of 
Kinsey in either, but was always a most useful and intelli- 
gent citizen and churchman. 

John Dickinson was very little of a Friend in his early 
life. Though descended on both sides from Quaker ances- 
tors, finding his wife in a Quaker household, and leaving 
children imbued with Quaker loyalty and ideals, it is not 
certain that he was ever a member, and as we shall see later, 
it was not till old age that his sympathies were given to 
the Quaker connection. 

He was descended from a Quaker family who emigrated 
to Virginia in 1654 and a few years later moved to the 

224 



JOHN DICKINSON 225 

Eastern shore of Maryland at a plantation which they called 
Crosia-dore. Here John Dickinson was born on November 
8th 1732 His father was Samuel Dickinson a lawyer, and 
afterward Judge of the Court of Kent County, Delaware. 
His mother was Mary Cadwalader, sister of the noted Dr. 
Thomas Cadwalader of Philadelphia. Judge Dickmson 
meant to give his son the best education the colomes af- 
forded But the three colleges then in existence, Harvard, 
William and Mary, and Yale, were too ecclesiastical m 
scope and spirit to attract a Quaker. John was confided 
to the care of a young Irishman, William Killen, afterward 
Chief Justice of Delaware. From this nationality not a 
few of the teachers of the Middle States in colomal times 
were drawn. It proved a happy choice and the bright boy, 
through his training in the classics, secured an English style, 
simple, direct, and eloquent, upon which was based much 
of the effectiveness of his later writings. 

When he was 18 years old he was sent to Philadelphia and 
entered the office of the leading attorney of the town, John 
Moland After three vears of study here he induced his 
father to send him to London to enter as a student of law 
at the Inns of Court. Here he had .he best training pos- 
sible for an English speaking youthful lawyer. He devel- 
oped the legal and historical interests so conspicuously 
useful in his political career, and which gave the bias to 
his mind, which later contrasted so strongly with the New 
England patriots with whom he was to work m the estab- 
lishment of the nation. While they appealed to the rights 
of man he sought his sanction in history and constitutional 
principle While they became excited and revolutionary 
he approached the questions calmly and reasonably, and 
after a certain point conservatively. 

In 1757 we find him again in Philadelphia starting the 
practice of law. As a lawyer he achieved an early success 

Q 



226; POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

though as a biographer says " He possessed considerable 
fluency, with a sweetness of tone and an agreeable modula- 
tion of voice. . . . His law knowledge was respectable 
though not remarkably extensive for his attention was 
directed to historical and political studies." 

His public life began in 1760 at the age of 28 when he was 
elected to the Delaware legislature. The two provinces had 
both been the property of William Penn, and while their 
legislatures separated in 1701 the Penn Family appointed 
the governor in both, sometimes the same person. Their 
public men were somewhat interchangeable, and John Dick- 
inson after the war at different times held the Governorship 
of both states. 

Two years later he was elected to the Pennsylvania 
Assembly from the City of Philadelphia. This was just 
when the question of the advisability of appealing to the 
crown to substitute royal for proprietary government was 
becoming acute. Franklin was urging it and Joseph Gal- 
loway, a legal competitor of Dickinson's, was making 
effective speeches for the movement. The most of the 
country Friends somewhat exasperated by the proprietary 
pretensions had been swerving to the same side. The older 
city Friends of weight and influence led by the Speaker 
Isaac Norris held back, partly from attachment to the old 
William Penn Charter of 1701 under which they were still 
working, partly because they feared the unknown possibil- 
ities of royal rule. Franklin and Dickinson the mature 
man of the world and the youthful student of history and 
law were the chief opponents in this contest as they were 
in many others to follow. 

The policj^ of the Penns was certainly indefensible. The 
refusal to pay their share of the taxes on their immense 
estates, their binding their deputies by secret instructions, 
which would be revealed after the Assembly had wrestled 



JOHN DICKINSON 227 

for weeks with a subject and had drawn up a bill only to 
find that it had all the while been impossible to have it 
passed, the frequent attempts to drive the Friends from the 
legislature by the enforcement of an oath of office, the selfish 
methods of dealing with the Indians which had provoked 
war, the opposition to paper money issues which had largely 
but 'conservatively stimulated trade, had created a settled 
and reasonable hostility to their rule, and had produced a 
mass of adverse but ineffective legislation. The Penns, 
secure in England as they deemed themselves to be in their 
now enormous returns from quit-rents and the sale of land, 
thought they could afford to defy opposition. But one re- 
source seemed left to the colonists, to force the power from 
their hands and trust to the chances of better times under 
a governor appointed by the crown. 

Dickinson was therefore on the unpopular side as was 
frequently the case in his future political life. While 
admitting the grievances under proprietary rule he mis- 
trusted the British ministry, and the course of events, begin- 
ning almost immediately after this, justified his sagacity. 

At present however the province was in the throes of an 
Indian War provoked primarily b> the injustice of the 
whites, but immediately by the conspiracy of Pontiac. The 
Delawares and Shawnese, the friends of Onas for 70 years, 
the "women" of the Iroquois, were now the fiercest of 
border ruffians. The Assembly, now non-Quaker, voted sup- 
plies liberallv for defense. The Penns yielding something to 
the necessities of the case still insisted on unreasonably low 
taxation for their land, and their Governor vetoed a bill of 
supplies, preferring that the frontiersmen should suffer rather 
than submit to an equitable demand. The Assembly more 
humane yielded the point and the feeling against the Pro- 
prietors did not diminish by the incident. 

Galloway expressed the general demand in a series of 



228 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

resolutions when in 1764 the Assembly met. They were 
in response to a number of petitions signed by country 
Friends, their chief opponents the Presbyterians of the fron- 
tiers, and by the Germans. On the other side were the 
Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Friends of Philadelphia 
who advised holding to the old Charter. 

The resolutions were passed all but unanimously, appar- 
ently in Dickinson's absence, but on May 26th he made a 
famous speech, which while it did not change the vote in 
the Assembly had a powerful effect on popular opinion. 
The speeches of Galloway and Dickinson were printed and 
are both masterly statements of their positions. Both were 
based on real arguments and studied logic, fortified by 
historical examples and constitutional principles.^ 

"Benjamin Franklin and John Dickinson greatly distin- 
guished themselves, the first as a politician the other as an 
orator " says Samuel Foulke a colleague. 

Dickinson however carried with him neither the house 
nor his constituents for he was defeated for election for the 
five following years. Franklin again went to England to 
urge the decisions of the Assembly, but the series of attempts 
at British taxation beginning about the same time he was 
advised by his friends not to hurry the issue, and the dawn 
of the harassing legislation which led up to the Revolu- 

1 The debate produced most angry feelings between the two 
main contestants and Dickinson challenged Galloway to a duel, 
which was declined. "That a Quaker should challenge a Quaker 
may well cause surprise," says a biographer. x\s a matter of fact 
probalily neither was a Quaker, though both wore members of 
Quaker families. In the histories of the times the term Quaker 
was used rather freely to include all who belonged to the "Quaker 
Party" or who took affirmations instead of oaths, or whose families 
were of this persuasion. 

Dickinson was greatly inflamed and says in his reply, "Pre- 
sumptions indeed must I appear should I venture into these lists, 
against a person who wields the weapons of wordy war — the only 
weapons he dares to wield." 



JOHN DICKINSON 229 

tionary War soon took away all wishes for a royal govern- 
ment. In 1770 Dickinson triumphantly came back into 
the Assembly. 

In the meantime he entered upon a series of studies and 
writings which extended his fame far beyond the bound- 
aries of his province. The Indian wars were over for the 
time, the French had been driven from the continent, and 
now England began to levy taxes to pay the bills incurred 
for the benefit of the Americans. John Dickinson brought 
his constitutional knowledge and effective style into the 
defense of the colonies against taxation imposed from Eng- 
land. A paper against the Stamp Act was widely read and 
made him a delegate to the impotent Congress of the Colo- 
nies of October, 1764, called to announce the conditions 
on which they were willing to be taxed. 

But two years later came the first of the " Farmer's Let- 
ters " which gave their author the first place in America 
as leader of the opposition to Britain's pretensions. From 
this time till 1776 this young man in his thirties was pro- 
claimed as the rising hope of the defenders of American 
rights. 

The Farmer's Letters, fourteen in number, following each 
other in rapid succession, read by all classes, solidified and 
made consistent and logical the gathering feeling against 
the mother country. They seemed to prove the justice and 
reasonableness of the position and propounded a theory on 
which all could unite. For though many fell away when 
it came to independence, there were but few who did not 
now have a lurking feeling that they were being imposed 
upon. The letters crystallized and made respectable this 
feeling by a political philosophy which satisfied the edu- 
cated and the ignorant alike. They referred to English law 
to prove that constitutional resistance was sanctioned and 
so made easy the conversion of the conservative lovers of 



230 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

the old country, and they contained the appeal to colonial 
patriotism which warmed the hearts of many who were just 
beginning to think that more than constitutional resistance 
might soon be possible. For the present however they dis- 
armed the movement for more serious measures by showing 
that legal remedies might produce the result desired. 

Boston in a town meeting voted " that the thanks of the 
town be given to the ingenious author of a course of letters 
published at Philadelphia, and in this place, signed A 
Farmer ' wherein the rights of American subjects are clearly 
stated and fully vindicated." Princeton gave him an hon- 
orary LLD All social organizations of Philadelphia 
opened their doors to him. Translated into French they 
were widely read and praised, and did something to develop 
the sentiment of that fermenting nation. John Dickinson 
was the great man of America. Nothing could be done 
without his leadership. He carried his conservative friends 
with him in non-importation and non-exportation agree- 
ments and in numerous remonstrances and commercial at- 
tacks upon British interests. 

True to his feeling that force was not now the proper 
remedy against oppression he mildly disapproved of the 
destruction of the tea in the Boston Harbor and thereby 
incurred the reprobation of Samuel Adams and the more 
revolutionary Bostonians. His settlement of the question 
. was better expressed by the Philadelphia method which 
sent the tea ship back to England without unloading, ad- 
vancing money to the captain to revictual her. 

It was however deemed of great importance to have 
Dickinson vigorously espouse the Boston side of the con- 
troversy and Paul Revere was sent to Philadelphia m 1774 
to insure the cooperation of that city. Dickinson would 
however go no farther than to express his sympathy with 
Boston and to counsel conciliation. The gentlemen through 



JOHN DICKINSON 231 

whom Revere acted, Thomas Mifflin, Charles Thompson 
and Joseph Reed, one a Friend, another closely associated 
with them, knew that for any united and effective Phila- 
delphia support which would include Friends, Dickinson 
must be secured. They tried every means to win him with- 
out further success. Thompson says " The Quakers courted 
and seemed to depend upon him." Indeed he appears to 
have had the unlimited confidence of all parties and it was 
admitted that no movement could succeed except with his 
concurrence. 

Then came the days of the Continental Congress. Dick- 
inson was a member from Pennsylvania and up to the date 
of the Declaration of Independence wrote the most of its 
state papers. It was these papers that drew from Lord 
Chatham the eulogy " I must declare and avow that in the 
master states of the world I know not the people or the 
Senate who in such a complication of diflBcult circumstances 
can stand in preference to the delegates of America assem- 
bled in General Congress in Philadelphia." 

These papers were the last hopeless efforts to avert war 
and revolution, which Dickinson haced, and the fact that 
he succeeded in getting them through the Congress in the 
face of the more determined representatives of New Eng- 
land and the South, shows the strength of his influence. 
John Adams called him " a piddling genius," which, however 
doubtful may be the meaning, was not intended to be 
complimentary. On the other hand his old opponent Gal- 
loway fast developing into a positive loyalist opposed him 
bitterly. 

He was holding a middle ground and as is usually the 
case retained it with difficulty. A leader in demanding 
redress, yet compromising by nature, he stood out against 
radical measures on the one side and submission on the 
other. 



232 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

In this he probably fairly represented his Quaker con- 
nection. The Friends had been vigorously opposed to any 
infringements on popular rights whether by Proprietors or 
Crown. Up to 1755 this had been done through their own 
membership, afterwards through representatives chosen by 
them. They had gained one point after another by legal 
means. In England where they had no political power, 
when laws went against them they protested and suffered. 
The method had been effective and Quaker scruples were 
often crystallized into legislation. 

They yielded exact obedience to all edicts, and had a 
testimony against plots and revolutions, but they were in- 
flexible in disobedience to laws which touched their con- 
sciences. They granted freedom of conscience to all others 
and demanded it for themselves. Now they were approach- 
ing a time when their love of liberty and their hatred of 
revolution and war were to conflict. Could they gain their 
points by appeal to the king, to the English people, to con- 
stitutional rights, all would be well and in this movement 
John Dickinson was their hope. 

His papers had made him influential and distinguished 
above any man in America and it did not seem impossible 
that he could carry the country. He was appealing for 
undoubted rights and privileges, needing not the support of 
illegal or revolutionary proceedings, rights which had the 
same foundation as trial by jury. The true English mode 
of resistance was by petition and remonstrance which gen- 
erally proved effective in time. There were of course pos- 
sibilities of unreason or obstinacy on either side in which 
case resistance by force must follow, but he warned the 
ministry that if this came to pass the responsibility would 
be with them. On the other hand he tried to moderate the 
extreme measures which the New England delegates were 
preaching, urged on by the popular feeling at home. A 



JOHN DICKINSON 233 

normal vigorous agitation, an appeal to English justice and 
English constitutional methods of resistance rather than 
premature and violent action was the content of his preach- 
ing, but neither Old nor New England was in a condition 
to respond. Franklin in England was writing that the tea 
sunk in Boston harbor should be paid for and seemed to 
be his ally. 

But appeals failed and the radicals forced independence, 
revolution and war, and here for a time ended the popularity 
and influence of John Dickinson. He was too much of a 
patriot to join Galloway and the loyalists; too cautious to 
sign a measure which he considered premature and which 
would lead to consequences which might be fatal; too little 
of a Friend to oppose war for its own sake. His argument 
was that without foreign aid a rebellion would not be suc- 
cessful and foreign aid should first be secured. In the first 
point he was probably right, and in the second the colonists 
took their chances. The French came in to save the sit- 
uation. 

His speech on this occasion was an eloquent plea for 
moderation. John Adams had invoked the " God of Elo- 
quence." Dickinson replied, "The gentleman who spoke 
last began by invoking a heathen God. I shall introduce 
what I have to say by humbly invoking the God of heaven 
and earth to inspire me with the knowledge and love of 
truth and if what I am about to say in opposition to the 
Declaration of Independence should be injurious in any 
degree to my country I pray God to overrule my arguments 
and to direct us to such a decision upon this weighty ques- 
tion as shall be most for the interest and happiness of the 
people committed to our care. ... I know too that I 
have acquired a character and some popularity with them, 
both of which I shall risk by opposing this favorite measure. 
But I had rather risk both than speak or vote contrary to 
the dictates of my judgment and conscience." 



234 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Though defeated in his method he did not sulk but joined 
the Revolutionary Army first as an ofl&cer, then, when 
driven out of his place by political enemies as a common 
soldier. He had lost his standing with the people and after 
his career in the field retired to private life on his Delaware 
plantation. 

A few years later he could not resist the call to Congress 
from Delaware and, after a brief service there, to the Gov- 
ernorship. By the end of the war there came a conserva- 
tive reaction and Pennsylvania turned to Dickinson. In 
1782 he was elected a member and soon after the President 
of the Supreme Executive Council, practically the Governor 
of the state. He held this place for three years and was 
succeeded by Dr. Franklin.^ 

In 1787 when the Convention which framed the Consti- 
tution of the United States met in Philadelphia John Dick- 
inson was a member from Delaware. He had himself 
drafted the Articles of Confederation under which the states 
worked since 1776, but no one saw more clearly than he, 
their inadequacy to meet the conditions of a permanent 
union. His intimate knowledge of the history of the free 
institutions of England and other states made his services 

1 A glimpse, not very flatterins:, is given of Dickinson in 1783 
by a German traveller Johann David Schoeff. He says, "I de- 
sired to make him my duty, and in order to be received by him 
1 had recourse to a physician of my acquaintance, who excused 
himself on the ground that he had been against the Governor at 
the last election." Then he tried an American Mayor who also 
made some trivial excuse. Then "I betook myself to a Quaker 
confidently believing I had come to the right man since Dickmson 
himself is of the Society of Friends ; but my Quaker assured me 
he had nothing to do with the Governor." Another doctor also 
declined. "I regretted I could not meet with one whose vainglory 
not satisfied with the government of so considerable a province as 
Pennsylvania was at the same time putting in for another that of 
the state of Delaware. But this may have been from lofty patriot- 



JOHN DICKINSON 235 

of great value. He was the author of the scheme by which 
the upper house of the federal legislature was to be com- 
posed of two from each state thus recognizing the rights of 
the smaller states. As delegate from Delaware he felt it 
to be a part of his duty to see that the doctrine of the rights 
of states as enunciated in the constitution should not permit 
the overwhelming influence of the more populous ones. 

When the form of the Constitution was finally agreed 
upon he was urgent for its adoption by the people and wrote 
over the signature of Fabius a series of articles in explana- 
tion and support of it. Delaware and Pennsylvania were 
the two states first to adopt it. 

In the old age of John Dickinson his political sympathies 
took an unexpected turn. The well known caution and 
conservatism of his younger years might have been ex- 
pected to deepen with age. Instead he allied himself with 
the Republican Party of Jefferson with whom he carried on 
a most sympathetic correspondence. He greatly rejoiced 
in the early days of the French Revolution, though depre- 
cating the cruelties and atheism into which it developed. 
He was often consulted and wrote many letters of advice 
as to public matters of consequence. Several suggestions 
were made to him to accept a United States Senatorship 
from Delaware and other offices, but nothing could tempt 
him from the life of quiet unofficial interest in public affairs. 
On February, 1808, he died in his 77th year and was buried 
in the graveyard attached to Friends Meeting House in 
Wilmington, Delaware. 

Such is a brief epitome of his public life. However we 
may differ as to the wisdom of his positions, we can readily 
recognize the consistent patriotism, the intelligent and stu- 
dious advocacy of important movements, the lack of asper- 
ity in his judgment of opponents, the intellectual grace and 
culture of the man, and his permanent influence upon the 
nation he helped to create. 



236 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

But what of John Dickinson the Quaker? Prior to his 
marriage at the age of 38 there is little in his life, except 
perhaps a certain quietness of manner and conciliatory 
spirit, to suggest his membership with Friends. The proba- 
bilities are that he was not a member, though why there 
are not facts known to show. Apparently his parents were 
Friends and he would have a birthright membership. Pos- 
sibly one of these lost the right before he was born in which 
case his name would not be recorded on the books. He 
did not use the Friendly " thou " and " thee " or the numer- 
ical names of the months even in writing to his family. 
His education was away from Friends and his associates 
after he came to live in Philadelphia were many of them 
of other denominations. 

He would however often find a congenial household at 
Fair Hill. The Norris family would have large intellectual 
as well as political attractions for the young student. Isaac 
Norris and he were closely associated in their opposition to 
the change of masters from the Proprietors to the Crown. 
The ample library would be a source of profit and pleasure 
and the entrance was easy for him with his graceful man- 
ners, ample means and fine intelligence to whatever was 
best in the society of the colonial capital. 

Isaac Norris died in 1769 and his daughter Sarah a few 
weeks later. Only Mary Norris was left of the family. 
She became the wife of John Dickinson in 1770 and as the 
heirs of Fair Hill they lived there " in great elegance." 
John Adams speaks of Dickinson's calling on him " in his 
carriage and four beautiful horses," and that " his residence 
was very fine with its beautiful prospect of the city, the 
river, the country, fine gardens and a very grand library." 

Mary Norris was an interested Friend but could not 
marry a non-member by Friendly methods. It was then a 
serious matter to marry " out of the Society " and the 
result usuallv was " disownment." 



JOHN DICKINSON 237 

The account which follows therefore indicates that her 
husband was not a Friend. " Thou will be greatly sur- 
prised," her uncle William Logan writes " to hear that our 
niece Polly Norris was married last night to John Dickin- 
son. . . . She was married at the Widow Norris's by 
George Bryan (a Magistrate). ... I am greatly con- 
cerned for the example Polly has set by this her outgoing in 
marriage. I fear she has slipped from the top of the hill 
of reputation she had gained in the Society and among her 
friends, and that it will be a long time before she gains it 
again if ever. I wish she may not repent it." 

But Polly probably never repented it. She retained her 
memnership, and largely through her her husband and chil- 
dren were influenced in the same direction. 

Had John Dickinson been a Friend in early life his 
membership would not have survived his military experi- 
ence during the war. Some writers have said that he was 
too important a man for the Quakers to lose, but such 
little knew the prompt, unbending, impartial action which 
followed every departure however slight from the straight 
line of peace, on either side of the controversy. 

At the end of the war however there are many evidences 
of his close approach to Friends, though he never joined in 
membership. His letters used the Friendly language no 
matter whom he addressed. He became a regular attender 
of Friends Meeting and interested himself in their affairs. 
He joined with them in the abolition movement, freed all 
his own slaves and drew up an emancipation bill for Dela- 
ware, which however was not adopted. He wrote to his 
cousin James Pemberton letters of concern that the Friends 
of the day read no literature but Quaker literature, and 
tried to encourage a wider literary interest. He wrote to 
them eloquently against the idea which was probably rather 
widely spread among them that education was in itself dan- 



238 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

gerous. "So assured am I that learning and religion will 
be found to agree together that I think it the indispensable 
duty of those who revere religion to cultivate learning in 
order to counteract the mischiefs flowing from its perver- 
sions and apply it to its proper use." 

To further encourage the idea he urged the Friends to 
establish a school and made to it liberal contributions in 
money and real estate. This came to an issue in 1799 and 
Westtown Boarding School still in honored existence was 
the fruit of their joint efforts. 

He and his wife gave to Wilmington Monthly Meeting of 
Friends a sum for the education of children of those not 
in affluent circumstances. Other benevolent projects were 
committed to other organizations of Friends. 

His identification with Friends was so close that he was 
usually considered a member. Thus we have this testimony 
from the son of Chief Justice Read: — 

"I have a vivid impression of the man, tall and spare, 
his hair white as snow, his face uniting with the severe sim- 
plicity of his sect a neatness and elegance peculiarly in 
keeping with it; his manners a beautiful emanation of the 
great Christian principle of love, with that gentleness and 
affectionateness which, whatever may be the cause, the 
Friends, or at least individuals among them, exhibit more 
than others, combining the politeness of a man of the world 
familiar with society in its most polished forms with con- 
ventional canons of behavior. Truly he lives in my mem- 
ory as the realization of my beau-ideal of a gentleman." 

But during all these years he was not a member with 
Friends. This was a matter of doubt till the recent dis- 
covery of two letters, one in the Historical Society of Penn- 
sylvania, and one in the Friends Library in Devonshire 
House in London, seems to set the matter at rest. 

A correspondent writing without date but probably about 
1787 is urging him to join Friends. She says: " Thou 



JOHN DICKINSON 239 

mayst be a suitable laborer in the work if disposed to. It 
is a worthy act not only to do good ourselves but to induce 
others thereto. If thou wast become a member of Society 
thou mightest with just assistance of others also yoked in 
mind to the service become as Dr. Fothergill, a vigilant 
advancer of it into execution. But that must depend on 
thy feelings. Perhaps human wisdom is not yet sufficiently 
reduced in subjection to the simplicity that is in Christ, 
to make thee as yet willing to stoop to the foolishness of 
the cross sometimes appearing in the Quaker. I do not 
mean an irrational or unchristian foolishness but what 
appeareth foolishness to Sophistry. I suggest these things 
respecting thyself. I do not say they are so. Forgive my 
great freedom and burn this if I do not conclude to save 
thee the trouble. If it goes let the veil of charity cover its 
defects. And may thou persevere this time in that which 
shall induce us to address thee in the character of — John 
Dickinson the worthy — not J. D. Esq., or the Great. 
Thou will say I suppose I am a strange girl to write as I do. 
Farewell however. 

" Thy friend, 

" A. Emlen, Jr." 

Again James Bringhurst in 1799 writes to a correspondent 
a letter which gives certain interesting facts concerning his 
later life. 

" A great change has taken place in John Dickinson 
although not yet in Membership with F'''^^ it plainly shews 
what the powerful operation of Divine Grace has done for 
him. who was once in almost the highest applause & popu- 
larity of Mankind as to worldly things, having been a great 
Lawyer, a Politician, a Governor of Pensilvania, & any 
station he seemed to chuse — having been the Author of 
what's called the Farmer's letters some years past, & now 
I believe him to be the improving Christian. He has so far 



240 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

taken up the cross as to use the plain language to all, & is a 
diligent attender of our religious meetings. I had been inti- 
mately acquainted with him & therefore took the liberty to 
lay before him in a letter I wrote a few weeks past, the use 
& benefit his influence might probably have if he could feel 
it right to exert it with G. Washington, & some others in 
high stations on behalf of the poor Black people detained 
in Bondage. — of his own Negroes he set a number free, in 
which I was informed he gave up to the amount of between 
eight & ten thousand pounds. Respecting that & some 
other matters he gave me some account last spring about a 
week before I left home to come here. — I went to Will- 
mington to see a Son of mine, who is settled there, when 
J. Dickinson was very pressing with me to spend some time 
with him at his house, which is large & comodious & pleas- 
ently situated in that Town, where he lives as a private 
Gentleman. He possesses vast property & therefore it is 
in his power to do much good with it wherein I believe he 
is good to the poor. I staid longer than I had intended on 
purpose from his solicitation & spent part of two days with 
him, when he was very free & open in conversation, one part 
of which I may have room to mention — in speaking of the 
difference between his former & present manner of Life, he 
told me his daughter had been his instructor; he has two 
children who are daughters lately grown up, no Son. He 
said, when he lived in Philadelphia, he wished his eldest to 
learn dancing & proposed it to her, offering to have a master 
come to teach her, — at which she made some hesitation. 
He then desired her to go into her chamber & set an hour 
or two alone to consider of it & then give him an answer. 
She went as he bid her & when she returned to him again, 
her answer was, * if Father pleases I had much rather be a 
Friend ' which altho' somewhat mortifying to him at that 
time he gave up to. That with some otlier parts of her 
conduct put him upon closer thinking of the cause. She 
is a fine young woman of superior understanding, just grow- 
ing up into the prime of life with every opportunity of 
indulgence that's apt to be pleasing to young minds. Thus 
to deny herself of those things, so powerfully struck his 
mind as gradually with other feelings he experienced to 
effect a change in him who was in great exaltation as to 



JOHN DICKINSON 241 

worldly Eminence. — I thought this short ace' might be 
agreeable to you both to see, far short it is, to what I could 
have wrote respecting the conversation we had, but I 
thought this enough to insert in this letter. I wish this part 
of it not to be much seen by others, as I should not like 
any of it as wrote by me, should come to his knowledge — 
that respecting his negroes he told me if some who held such 
knew of, perhaps it might be an encouragement to them to 
set theirs free, tho' I dont wish that to be mention'd either 
from me, — he said he became uneasy in his mind about his, 
& therefore thought to accommodate the matter to himself 
& them also, & therefore order'd a number of huts to be 
built for their better living on the Plantations, & several 
other ways endeavor'd to render a state of slavery easy to 
them, but after all this he found his mind disturbed on their 
ace', & at last determin'd to set them at liberty, & wrote 
a manumission for the whole of them, immediately after 
which he told me he had a peaceful easy mind, & everything 
seemed to prosper in his hands, & to crown all, his Income 
was abundantly increased contrary to his expectation." 
Dated Tiverton Rhode Hand S'"" of 10"^ mo 1799. 

He never accepted the historic position of Friends on 
the subject of the unchristian character of the methods of 
warfare. Writing to his cousin, George Logan, a grandson 
of James Logan, then United States Senator from Penn- 
sylvania, he says in 1804 " As standing armies are justly 
abhorred among us our liberty must depend upon our being 
an armed nation; and considering the honor of those with 
whom we have to contend, we must be a populous nation." 

Warner Mifflin who was a fellow member of the Conven- 
tion which framed a Constitution for Delaware in 1782, a 
Friend in good standing, thus writes of Dickinson's efforts 
to defeat the causes which Friends had much at heart. " I 
believe I attended them (the sittings of the Convention) 
every day except one meeting-day and am very strongly 
suspicious that John Dickinson knew that was our meeting- 
day, as he then moved that the blacks should be prevented 



242 POLITICAL LEADERS OF PENNSYLVANIA 

by the Constitution from purchasing real property &c. His 
conduct respecting the blacks and the conscientiously scru- 
pulous against arms, induced one to believe that he was as 
great an enemy to the cause of righteousness as was in that 
body. ... I told him that those who came nearest the 
truth and were not in it were its greatest enemies." 

Thus he lived through his life on the fringe of the Society, 
identified with them in popular estimation but never fully 
trusted by their standard members. 

Whether Quaker or not he was a devout and pious Chris- 
tian. His private letters breathe a spirit of fervent reli- 
gious life, and his kindly but unostentatious donations all 
through his life betray the sense of responsibility for the 
proper use of his large wealth. His wife had inherited 
Fair Hill and when in Philadelphia they spent their life 
there in a generous hospitality. But knowing that Isaac 
Norris had desired that the property should descend to the 
male members of the Norris family, he transferred without 
compensation all rights in the very valuable estate to the 
sons of Charles Norris. 

The residence at Fair Hill was burned by the British 
during their occupancy of the city in 1777, part of the 
Library being saved. 

The books left, some 1500 volumes, were given in 1783 
to Dickinson College then just established by the Presby- 
terians. He also donated two tracts of valuable land 
altogether 500 acres to the new institution. It was char- 
tered "Dickinson College in memory of the great and im- 
portant services rendered to his country by his Excellency, 
John Dickinson, Esquire, President of the Supreme Execu- 
tive Council and in commemoration of his very liberal 
donation to the institution." He also subscribed to the 
funds of Princeton College. 

Education, charity, religion, these were the purposes to 



JOHN DICKINSON 243 

which his peaceful later years were devoted. Almost his 
last words were " I wish happiness to all mankind and the 
blessings of peace to all the nations of the earth, and these 
are the constant subjects of my prayers." 



INDEX 



Asceticism, 13 
Ashbridge, George, 145 
Assembly, 144 

Bancroft, George, 54 
Barclay, Robert, 63, 67 
Benezet, Anthony, 10 
Biddle, John, 44 
Biddle, William, 43 
Biles, William, 96, 123 
Blackwell, Governor, 21, 73 
Biissot de Warville, 210 

Carpenter, Samuel, 33, 52, 71, 77, 

108, 122, 139, 184, 201 
Chronicle of ben Saddi, 194 
Conscience, Quaker, 15, 51 

Davie s, Richard, 55 
Dickinson, James, 67 
Dickinson, John 

ancestry, 224 

education, 225 

studies law, 225 

enters public life, 226 

contest Franklin and Galloway, 226 

Farmer's Letters, 229 

influence in Philadelphia, 230 

Continental Congress, 232 

represents Friends, 232 

moderation, 232 

joins army, 234 

Governor of Delaware and Penn- 
sylvania, 234 

constitutional convention, 234 

sympathizes with Republicans, 235 

deaih, 235 

as a Friend, 236, 238 

marriage, 236 

letters of A. Emlen and James 
B) iiighursl, 239 

donations, 242 
Dixon, Hepworth, 20 



Eckley, John, 73, 77 
Evans, Governor, 21, 97, 121 

Fisher, Daniel, 37 

Fletcher, Governor, 78, 88, 89 

Ford, Patrick, 22, 26, 97 

Fox, George, 63 

Franklin, Benjamin, 150, 192, 196, 
198, 207, 215, 226 

Freame, Margaret Penn, 42 

Friends, society of 

abstain from politics, 3 
general meeting, 31 
war problems, 7, 8, 50, 147 
control Assembly, 145 
leave Assembly, 193, 195, 217 

Galloway, Joseph, 226. 228 
Goodson, John, 41 

Gookin, Governor, 21, 93, 97, 129, 136 
Gordon, Governor, 106, 144 
Growdon, Joseph, 108 

Hamilton, Andrew, 42, 160, 190 
Hill, Richard, 124, 128, 133, 139, 154, 

184 
Hodgkin, Thomas, 18 
Holme, Thomas, 59 
Hoskins, Jane, 109 

Indian policy, 47, 48, 49, 140, 174. 
188, 191, 205 

Jenings, Samuel, 66 
John ap John, 55 
Jones, Griffith, 26 

Keith, George, 62, 68 

Keith, Sir William, 46, 103, 142, 157 

Kinsey, John 

ancestry, 156 

hat in court, 157 



245 



246 



INDEX 



Kinsey, John — continued 
came to Philadelphia, 159 
meeting work, 159 
state offices, IGO 
contest with Governor Thomas, 

162-169 
chief justice, 171 
Maryland boundary line, 172 
bills of credit, 172 
differs with governor, 173 
treaties with Indians, 174 
Albany treaty, 176 
death, 176 
notices, 177 

end of Quaker control, 178 
meeting notice, 180 

Lloyd, Charles, 57 
Lloyd, David 

opposed to Penn, 26 

early Hfe, 84 

offices in state, 85 

differs with Pastorius, 86 

politician, 88 

opposes Logan, 89, 98, 100 

opposes Penn, 90 

war grants, 91 

identity of Friends with govern- 
ment, 91 

Lloyd defeated, 1710, 92, 102, 132 ; 
1705, 96 

adjournment of House, 92 

address to Penn, 1704, 94, 122 

courts to be established, 99 

differs with Gookin, 99, 101 

moves to Chester, 102 

sides with Sir W. Keith, 104 

death, 106 

as a lawyer, 106 

as a politician, 107 

as a Friend, 108 

Jane Fenn, 110 

services to state. 111 

literarj' work, 1 13 

country people for Lloyd, 131 
Lloyd, Grace, 109 
Lloyd, Thomas 

qualities of, 22 

signs Penn's certificate, 33 

comes to Pennsylvania, 60 

opposes George Keith, 61 



Pastorius and Lloyd, 70 

deputy governor, 73 

differs with Governor Black well, 
74,77 

death, 78 

character, 79 

memorial of Welsh Friends, 80 

letter to Welsh Friends, 82 
Logan, Dr. George, 153, 241 
Logan, James 

comes to Pennsylvania, 89, 115 

attitude to war, 91, 115, 148 

fidelity to Penn, 97 

descent, 114 

offices held, 115 

dispute with Daniel Cooper, 116 

with Thomas Story, 117 

relation to Friends, 118 

quit- rents and collections, 119 

Indian question, 120, 140, 150 

politics, 121 

bitterness with Lloyd, 122 

Evans hoax, 123 

powder money, 124 

impeached, 125 

bad assemblies, 126 

Lewes plundered, 127 

trustee under Penn's mortgage, 128 

goes to England, 129 

election of 1710, 132 

returns, 133 

salary, 135 

marriage, 138 

better times, 139 

differs with Governor Keith, 143 

made chief justice, 146 

president of council, 146 

aids lotteries, 149 

Stenton, 149 

influence, 150 

intellectual interests, 151 

library, 152 

death, 153 

descendants, 153 
Logan, William, 153 
Lotteries, 44 
Lower, Thomas, 26 

Makin, Thomas, 71 
Markham, William, 77, 89, 121 
Mather, Cotton, 64 



INDEX 



247 



Mead, William, 26 
Mifflin, Warner, 242 

Negro meetings, 33 
Norris, Deborah, 154 
Norris, Isaac, Sr. 

judgment of Penn, 25 

of Thomas Story, 117 

care of young Penn, 122 

poor prospects of Pa., 127 

arranges Penn's debts, 128, 184 

early life, 181 

builds Fairhill, 182 

marries Mary Lloyd, 183 

politics, 185 
Norris, Isaac, 2nd 

birth, 186 

City CouncU, 186 

merchant, 187 

assists Kinsey, 187 

goes to Albany, 189 

speaker, 189 

state house built, 190 

liberty bell, 190 

Albany treatJ^ 191 

declines to leave Assembly, 194 

the Chronicle of Nathan ben 
Saddi, 194 

appointed agent in England, 196 

contest with proprietors, 197 

death, 198 

relation to meeting, 198 

married life, 199 

scholarship, 199 

Oaths, 45, 103, 137 
Owen, Grifflth, 33 

Palatines, 144 

Pastorius, F. D., 67, 69, 70, 72, 86 
Pemberton, Israel, Sr., 201 
Pemberton, Israel, Jr. 

leader of Quakers, 202 

trouble with Governor Thomas, 202 

Indian interests, 205 

King Wampum, 206 

Paxton boys, 207 

opposes Thomas Penn, 208 

tea ship, 209 

British sympathizers, 210 

Friends in revolution, 210 



contest with John Adams, 212 

banished to Virginia, 213 

death, 213 
Pemberton, James 

education, 214 

offices in church, 214 

member of Assembly, 216 

character of Assembly, 216 

break-up of Quaker majority, 217 

Pennsylvania Hospital, 218 

Acadians, 219 

banished to Virginia, 219 

Westtown School, 220 

anti-slavery work, 222 

death, 223 
Pemberton, Phineas, 71, 200 
Penal code, 46, 103 
Penn, Hannah C, 103, 105, 136 
Penn, John, 147 
Penn, Thomas, 147, 196 
Penn, William 

religious liberty, 10, 36, 93 

weak qualities, 23 

strong qualities, 24, 27 

Isaac Norris' judgment, 25 

personality, 29, 30, 33 

certificates of English Friends, 32 

constitutions, 34, 35 

democracy, 39 

amusements, 43 

oaths, 45, 103 

capital punishment, 46 

Indian policy, 47, 48, 49 

war, 50, 52 

diet of nations, 51 

travels in Germany, 63 

Penn and Pastorius, 70 

Penn and Blackwell, 77 

financial troubles, 94, 97 

engages Logan, 115 

land ownership, 120 

opposition to Penn, 130 

Penn's letter to Friends, 133 

sale to crown, 135 

paralyzed, 135 
Penn, William, Jr., 121 
Personality, 9 
Punishment, capital, 46, 138 

Quaker reforms, 7 
Quit-rents, 119 



248 



INDEX 



Riot of 1742, 169. 187 
Roberts, Hugh, 41, 69 
Roosevelt, Theodore, 160 

Second coming, 11 
Smith, John, 154, 177 
Standards of conduct, 1 
Stockdale, William, 65 
Story, Thomaa, 33 



Thomas, Governor, 147, 161 
Thompson, Charles, 42, 231 

War troubles, 101, 162, 170. 192 
Weiser, Conrad, 173, 175 
Welsh Friends, 55, 80 
Welsh Tract, 59, 74-76 
Whitehead, George, 26 
Williame, Roger, 10, 36 



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